Gertlins – The New Batch: Reviewing ‘I Hate Fairyland’ #14

Just like real life, tinsel town dreams have a habit of wearing off quickly as brutal realities come crashing down. After barely surviving watching her life turned into a grotesque soulless summer blockbuster, Gertrude and Fairyland have a whole new devastating issue to deal with.

It’s time to shift genres again as I Hate Fairyland #14 digs back into the series’ first year continuity as the monstrous Gertlins are back. Monster story meets zombie apocalypse in the latest from Skottie Young, Brett Bean, Jean-Francois Beaulieu, and Nate Piekos.

A nice little swerve here after spending the last few issues sending the book onto a variety of mostly stand-alone style adventures. Young was pulling certain threads through the first two arcs of this new volume and begins to weave them back in here now. The first Gertlins issue leaned heavily into being a Gremlins-esque story, with this one pulling from that but leaning far more into world-ending viral style apocalypse tropes.

I’ve said it time and time again, but a strength of this series is that one can never guess what might come next. Even seeing covers doesn’t help, because some of them, while awesomely rendered, bring more questions than answers.

Bean just does such a tremendous job at creating really fun beautiful renderings of this (warped) storybook-like world. What takes the work up another notch is being able to then incorporate in blood, gore, violence, and other stuff while never missing a beat in that whimsical fantasy general vibe. All the violent stuff is great, but just the pages of traveling through Fairyland (even the ones where the Gertlins are causing havoc) are magical.

A big part of that is just how well Bean handles the paneling. Letting things have plenty of room to breathe and grow while keeping the audience right in the thick of things.

Adding to that are the colors of Beaulieu. Rife with lots of vibrant popping bits mixed into the heavier, darker, and more neutral scene setting colors. It’s through this palatte that the tone is maintained throughout the issue, giving the world the right energy it needs to feel real but beyond reality at the same time.

Gert and others have such out there voices, and Piekos makes that felt. Dropping in lots of modifiers, shifted bubbles, colors, and more to always let voices be louder or bigger or just funnier than they might be without all that.

All in all, it’s a whimsical visual feast that has kept this book being a stand-out month after month.

I Hate Fairyland #14 is now available from Image Comics.