‘I Hate Fairyland, Volume Six: Last Gert Standing’ – Young, Bean (Image Comics)

 

Page Count: 128 Pages

For all my ‘I really won’t leave it too long before reading the rest of I Hate Fairyland’… It has been a while since I read ‘Volume 5’. And that’s just the way it goes with this series; as much as I love it, I have to be in exactly the right mood to pick it up or it just doesn’t work for me. Well, after another stressful day at work yesterday, it suddenly struck me that I was in just the mood for something irreverent, anarchic and more than a little bit violent, all at once. And when that mood strikes me, this is where I end up! Lets have a little chat about ‘Last Gert Standing’…

Death by a thousand Gerts! King Cloudeous is determined to finish what his sister, Queen Cloudia never could: kick Gert out of Fairyland FOR GOOD! And the only way to do that is to have every Gert who ever lived battle each other to the death. Who said that there’s only so many Gerts to go round?! They clearly haven’t read this comic… OG Gert returns to find the last key to escape, but is it too late, and will she become a Lifetime Citizen of Fairyland…?

Well… I’m more than happy to be able to confirm that ‘Last Gert Standing’ continues a long-standing ‘I Hate Fairyland’ tradition of being able to cheer me up exactly when I need it to. Gert’s journey, through the last place she ever wanted to see again, just crackles with energy manifesting either as biting sarcasm or the potential to explode into violence. And you never know which one you’re going to get, sometimes you even get the violence and the sarcasm all at once, and it’s glorious. You can tell that Skottie Young is having the time of his life telling Gert’s tale (all of the Gerts...) and Brett Bean is having a similar time drawing it on the page. Both writer and artist combine superbly to tell a tale that pokes fun at fairytales as well as striking out into strange new realms of its own. Exactly what this reader needed after a rough old day at work, especially when Gert catches up with not only Larry but Duncan the Dragon as well; officially my new favourite ‘comic book reunions’.

It’s not all roses though…

Without going into too much detail here, Young pulls a ‘reset’ on us that right now, I’m really undecided over. Thanks for the advance warning, ‘anonymous commenter’ from October last year ;o) While I can see the rationale behind the reset, it does come at the expense of a storyline that I was keen to see play out and it was a shame to see it left behind. There was an interesting story there, just waiting to be told. Nice ‘bait and switch’ move though, very smoothly done.

Just what I needed then, albeit with a little doubt now about where the story can go next. Is Gert’s tale just another example of history being doomed to repeat itself? We’ll see...