Building Monsters Ain’t For Amateurs — Reviewing ‘I Hate Fairyland’ #47

Creating life, sorry, I mean reanimating life, sure seems to be pretty simple when you put your (messed up) mind to it. Gertrude created two whole beings in not time flat. Surely, they will not turn on her in any capacity. Right?

Just because she used Frankenstein as a template can’t mean things will keep following that model. Oh, silly. Of course it would. This is I Hate Fairyland after all. The forty-seventh issue, to be accurate, from Skottie Young, Derek Laufman, Jean François Beaulieu, and Nate Piekos.

After a bevy of more standalone adventures, we get a new little arc out of the last issue and this one. Hell, it even continues into the next, because there are consequences to Gertrude’s latest antics. That Gert surely will never learn, which makes for fun comics for us.

A spin on the Frankenstein mythos is really interesting here. Just like with the Doctor, Gertrude isn’t getting what she wants from the creations she has brought into this world. So she abuses, tricks, and abandons them rather quickly. Young plays within this space to build up some empathy and depth for both the newly named “Pizza” and “B.F.F.” who bond over their abandonment.

There is definitely darkness to the origin beats of B.F.F. and the girls whose memories she has within her. It speaks to how much Young always tries to weave some tangible sentiments into the work rather than just always being over the top humor gore.

All the gory and silly stuff is rendered perfectly by Laufman, as usual. He hits those animated cartoonish vibes that the series has always tried to follow with its Fairy Tale roots. At the same time, there is so much to find in many of the panels where the emotional beats are raw. Even in the soft brightness of the world, we feel the heaviness creeping in during these painful pages.

Darker colors highlight these moments, as the color palette swirls and shifts to meet the moment. Beaulieu knows this world front to back, as he should having colored it for so many years now. He pulls all the right levels to bolster the tone and evoke the correct emotional responses. This keeps it light and hefty at the same time so that tragedy, comedy, and brutality are well-served at every turn.

We need to hear these deep emotional moments too. Piekos is always good for this, really mining every bit of energy from dialogue and other sounds depicted in the lettering. He brings all the color and boldness necessary. This lets the bubbles jump all around in shape, size, and placement to best accomplish the task.

Only two issues remain before the book hits the big 5-0, and there’s no telling what shenanigans could be going down in that time. I can’t wait to find out.

I Hate Fairyland #47 is now available from Image Comics.