Returning To The Hell You Know — Reviewing “I Hate Fairyland Vol 5: Gert’s Inferno’

Once upon a time (called 2015) there was a series called I Hate Fairyland, starring a young woman named Gert/Gertrude. She was transported to the magical fantasy realm known as (of course) Fairyland. It should have been a great adventure. Except, Gert was trapped there for thirty years.

Thirty years where she could not grow up and was driven to the edge, massacring her way through numerous quests and realms to get home. She found that way home and turned into her 30-something self with no real-world experience and lots of mental/emotional scars. In 2018, that’s where the series came to an end after 20 issues.

Not in 2023, after creator Skottie Young focused on a few other projects, I Hate Fairyland is back to bring chaotic cartoon-like dark fantasy to comics once more.

Young just easily slides back into this world as if he never left it, and knowing the way that stories embed themselves in the mind of the writer there was part of him that probably never did leave.

Within these first pages, there is a sense of sympathy that can be felt when we’re shown how hard it is for Gert to fit back into this world. The character still has that dark edge we recall from the previous series, but some of the things she’s going through now are not her fault. Being stripped of formative years kind of means she never had a shot at being able to find a spot within this world, and now she’s pushing back against it as the frustration leaks out.

We’re given a new villain and a way to get Gert back into Fairyland for a mission, but of course, it all goes wrong for her. I applaud Young’s choice to not jump right into Fairyland itself, instead creating Inferno (a weigh station/border station of sorts) to give the audience something new but also familiar.

Were given a unique first arc as each issue is different. The first recaps and gets us caught up on Gert’s terrible real-world life, while the second is about the new villain/mission. Our third and fourth ignore much of the quest to give us a hack/slash Gremlins pastiche and a bizarre but hilarious survival fantasy in the stomach of a monster.

Then there is the special fifth issue.

That would be a basically completely silent issue with no lettering (dialogue or captions) till the very end, but not meant to be enjoyed silently. Nope, they got the indie band Jack the Radio to create a song inspired by I Hate Fairyland that is meant to accompany the reading of the issue. An issue that is ¾ montage as we speed through the lengths Gert must go through to finally, after years, breakthrough into Fairyland proper to begin her mission to save the song of the Villionaire Wiggins as well as help him exploit the land for profit (more on that in a bit).

I would say that Brett Bean and Jean-Francois Beaulieu pulled out all the stops when creating these issues but let’s be honest, there were never any stops to be pulled from day one. There are no limits to what is happening here, and they depict that perfectly on the page.

With Young focusing on just the writing this time around, Bean steps into the artistic side of things. All the art has that same over-the-top kinetic animated energy that was on display in the first volume. While Bean’s style is also unique, there are great similarities to what Young was doing in the previous volume that makes the changeover almost natural. Many of the visuals to do with the Fairyland stuff at the start look all idyllic and like a fun kids’ cartoon before they change to the darker bloodier montage, and then take on an even darker sort of energy as we’re thrust into the broken real-world life of Gert.

There is a powerful energy that radiates from the work that Bean brings to the page, so full of life and emotion and able to communicate so much while also building such a deep and lived-in feeling world. It’s the emotional part that is key, as the facial expressions and body language of Gert and the others fully sell the story as it fully fits into the ‘show, don’t tell’ mentality.

Making things colorful, but also toned down in a grounded way is quite a feat, and Beaulieu pulls it off, whether it was in the slightly less vibrant ‘real world’ or this more highly vibrant Fairyland adjacent world. It’s a palette choice that plays with big bright greens and reds and oranges as spaces are colorful and have a life of their own, but also keeps the flesh tones and other elements from being too over the top like much of the setting. It gives this world and its inhabitants a firm foundation that ground it, while still letting it fully live up to its fantastical roots. We see a lot of this during the more frantic action-packed bloody moments on hand.

Geysers of blood can be found on pages, like actual geysering blood out of ripped-off body parts, big time ouch, but they are done in a way that it’s red but not like so bright it feels comical. Other elements on the page are far brighter than the blood and gore, as that is comical in styling but feels more grounded in coloring.

Speaking of colorful, just behold the work that Nate Piekos is delivering once again. The overall art isn’t the only thing pulling out stops and going all in, we got all the usual great stuff that lettering can do (guiding the eyes across a page, getting dialogue out there, setting volume & tone, and more) but tons of extras. Those extras would be the gross puking-styled font or the big giant green fuzzy-looking exclamation about Gertlins and so much more. Piekos lives in the moment of this story and world and lets that seep into the fantastic lettering work to make sure that this lettering style befits the fantastical elements that are here.

Gert’s censored swears (something she doesn’t have to do but is stuck in a loop of doing after over 30 years doing so) and the SFX embody all this colorful madcap energy. They have their own style and colors and help bring so much to a page, just a delight to see either one filling up spaces on the page, but in a good way.

I Hate Fairyland Vol 5: Gert’s Inferno is now available from Image Comics.