Kelly’s Thoughts


I’m not a huge fan of fairy tales. I like them well enough, but there’s little that compels me to pick up a fairy tale retelling — a good hook or jump off the tale can do it, though. And Fairy Tale Comics, edited by Chris Duffy, has a fantastic one: it’s a graphic collection of shortened fairy tales that span from your well-known stories to those which are far less well-known. Even more compelling is the fact this collection involves work from a lot of well-known artists in the comic world whose other works I’ve either enjoyed or are familiar with.

In other words, this isn’t just any re-made fairy tale comic book. It adds something entirely new.

All of the art is stylistic to the artist, as are the ways that they spin their fairy tales. These are shortened versions of the stories, so it is interesting to see what was kept in and what was removed — or what was swapped around all together.

Gigi D. G. did a spin on Little Red Riding Hood that was subtle but which made me fall in love with the way the story was told — rather than have the lumberjack be male, as it’s traditionally presented, it’s a female in this version. My favorite in the entire book in terms of art was Gilbert Hernandez’s Hansel and Gretel. Though I didn’t love it at first, I warmed up to it because it’s really funny. The expressions on the faces are excellent, and the use of color is really dynamic. The final page is perhaps where it shines the most: we see the kids shoving the witch in the oven, and there’s a great juxtaposition of the bright, candy-colored images with the house burning down, with red and black. It’s almost jarring, but in a way that’s funny.

I was a fan of Raina Telgemeier’s take on Rapunzel and I really liked the new-to-me fairy tale by Luke Pearson, The Boy Who Drew Cats. Even though it was unfamiliar to me, I found myself enjoying the read AND the art — one didn’t outshine the other. Graham Annable’s take on Goldilocks and the Three Bears surprised me in a positive way, being wordless and just as effective a story without the words to tell it. Even those who might not be familiar with the tale (little kids) would completely understand it by art alone.

What makes Fairy Tale Comics enjoyable is that even those stories and interpretations that didn’t work for me were quick and when I lost interest in a couple of them, I didn’t feel bad skipping them. This collection has some misses, but other readers may find what I consider a miss to be really stand out. The book is perfectly appropriate for very young readers, as well as those who are older.

Kimberly’s Thoughts

This collection is worth reading even if you only read The Boy Who Drew Cats. In fact, after I finished it, I made my boyfriend stop what he was doing and read it immediately so he could experience its joy. It’s so different from the other mostly Grimm and Perrault tales and completely refreshing. Also, very very funny. (Its author/artist, Luke Pearson, is also the creator of the 2012 Cybils finalist Hilda and the Midnight Giant, another supremely weird and weirdly funny little graphic story that I enjoyed quite a lot.)

The other stories, as in most collections, were hit and miss for me. While there’s certainly an enormous amount of creativity here, I was a little disappointed by how straightforward some of the tales were. By that I mean they followed very closely the storyline most readers are accustomed to, without a new twist to make them a bit fresher. The art is almost uniformly outstanding and interesting, but I wish there had been a little more oomph to the stories themselves.

I compare these stories to Nursery Rhyme Comics, the previous collaboration by graphic storytellers edited by Duffy. By necessity, authors/artists had to be a bit more creative when interpreting the rhymes, since the rhymes themselves were frequently nonsensical and didn’t have a built-in story. It was interesting to see how the artists could draw the rhymes to give them a story (or not). By contrast, most of the authors in Fairy Tale Comics stuck to the traditional stories you’ve likely read before.

That said, the graphic format may make the stories fresh enough for most readers anyway. There are a few writers/artists who took things a little bit sideways, making them more their own. (The female lumberjack is a good example.) And as Kelly mentioned, it’s a great collection for young readers who may come to many of these stories with new eyes, never having read them anywhere else before.

Fairy Tale Comics will be available on Tuesday. Review copy provided by the publisher.