Gert has been rolling through the realm of the fairies for far too long. Her exploits have been pretty well explored by writer/creator Skottie Young over the course of the past several years, but every now and then, a tale of violence and aggression falls through the cracks. And so it is that Young puts forth an anthology series of short stories called Untold Tales of I Hate Fairyland. The five-issue mini-series opens with a two-story issue featuring work by artist Aaron Conley and writer/artist Dean Rankine. Gert gets a little violent with a quartet of lovable characters drawn from pop cultural fantasy.

A ridiculously large barbarian enters the cold and snowy wastes of Ice Cream Island. He’s a massive arsenal of a human being, carrying no fewer than nine swords, a morning star flail, and a large battle ax. Naturally, Gert is in love...with the ax, of course...Elsewhere, she’s using her own axe to try to kill three little pigs. (One’s wearing a fez. One’s wearing a beret. The other one’s wearing a baseball cap.) She’s having some difficulties with the little trio until the Lady in the Lake comes through from an inauspicious place and...hands her Excalibur. The pigs don’t stand a chance, but they DO have some power at their disposal. 

Young limits his half of the issue to a very simple and aggressive bit of comic brutality. The barbarian in question IS ridiculously amped-up, but lacks the total over-the-top exaggerated complexity of Thrud the Barbarian. It’s still kind of fun to watch Gert take on the uber-massive superhuman fantasy form. The conflict between Gert and the pigs that takes up the second half of the issue is a bit more complex...but not by much.

Conley’s rendering of the action in the first half is kind of fun. Young has come up with a really interesting visual: a brutal little girl fights a big muscly barbarian in what is essentially...the Land of Dairy Queen. It’s a fun visual concept that Conley does a pretty good job of rendering for the page. Rankine’s art in the second half of the issue is crude to the point of being almost incoherent. The action and motion are clearly there, but Rankine renders ugliness that reaches depths that lack any kind of real artistry. Anybody can do crude art. It takes the right kind of warped genius to turn crude into something magnificent. Rankine doesn’t have that kind of genius. 

In theory, it should be a lot of fun to watch a bunch of different artists and writers take the weird playground of Young’s Fairyland and just...run with it in any direction they want. It’s all too easy to go for something WAY too simple, though...and that’s pretty much what the first issue of the anthology series has turned out to be. Gert’s a fun character. Fairyland’s a fun place. With any luck, there’s good stuff coming from this mini-series in the months to come.

Grade: D