‘I Hate Fairyland, Volume Seven: In The Mean Time’ – Young, Bean (Image Comics)

 


Page Count: 128 Pages

Well… This week continues to be a challenging one but there’s only a couple of days left until the weekend, I’ve got this ;o) With this being the case, you won’t be surprised when I tell you that I’m still very much about the comfort reads and tomorrows post will be more of the same. But that’s for tomorrow though, where are we today? Well…

Remember yesterday when I said that ‘the only criteria [for a comfort read] is that you know exactly what you’re getting and it’s exactly what you need? ‘ What I needed last night was a ‘shot in the arm’ to stop me falling asleep too early in the evening. While the literal definition was out of the question, a ‘comic book equivalent’ was definitely do-able, especially when it had only been a few days since I read ‘Last Gert Standing’. It was time for another trip to Fairyland, and…

The twisted Fairyland adventures continue in this seventh volume…

Join Gert as she continues to stick her axe where it doesn’t belong in a series of bloody misadventures: dealing with Cloudia being sent to the real world instead of her, getting involved with the Billy Goats Gruff, having a movie made of her life in Fairyland and transforming into even more of a monster, than she already is, to deal with the return of an old problem…

Now, the problem with reading two volumes of ‘I Hate Fairyland’, so close to each other, is that if you’re going to write posts about them, you’re inevitably going to end up repeating yourself. The series runs on a very consistent vein of energy and art, that’s really the whole point, so… Bear with me?

That energy is very much in evidence, in this volume, and considering that was why I picked the book up in the first place, I’m not going to complain about the result because, well… That would be a bit silly really. Same deal with the artwork. Lets just say that I absolutely picked the right book to read on an evening where I needed to stay awake as long as possible. There is plenty happening here and it’s all carried along on a veritable tidal wave of blood, assorted viscera and Gert’s acerbic wit. Just what the doctor ordered… Actually, can you imagine a doctor writing that on your prescription? Anyway…

It was slightly unfortunate then that the stories themselves, didn’t quite live up to the energy that was lavished upon them… ‘In The Meantime’ is a book for rounding things off and tying up loose ends; it’s also a book for tales that are filling in a gap until the next big event. I’ve got nothing against that approach (sometimes, loose ends need tying up) but here, the mixture didn’t quite work for me. Cloudia’s tale could have been a mini-series in itself but felt rushed in what was essentially some quick build up to a fart joke. And I’ve got nothing against fart jokes either, this one just didn’t land. Young’s take on ‘The Billy Goats Gruff’ (‘The Billy Goats Gert’?) was a lot better but it was followed by some heavy-handed commentary on Hollywood and a brief trip into the consequences of ‘Gert’s Inferno’. These were fun enough but didn’t really add anything to the forward momentum of the plot. I felt like I was parked up, waiting for the next big event to come along, and while that approach is a valid one, I needed a little more impact and it wasn’t there. If you’re a fan though, I’d expect your mileage to vary.

‘In The Mean Time’ is an odd one to call then. It absolutely did the job that I needed it to but the stories that it collected were uneven in quality, for me anyway. Not every read is going to be a hit though and I’ve still got ‘Volume 8’ on the TBR pile so, here’s to a better read (probably in the next day or two)…

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