Y’know, comic books based on fairy tales aren’t quite as
common as you might think. I know, it
seems like a ridiculous notion. However,
with that being the case, I thought I’d take the chance with this column to
sometimes focus on comics that use concepts and stereotypes of concepts that
have been drawn from fairy tales.
That’s what brings us to this specific comic: Princess
Ugg from Oni Press, written and illustrated by Ted Naifeh and with
colors and lettering by Warren Wuchinich.
This comic deals with the particular concept of the princess
and stereotypes of what a princess in a fantasy setting is supposed to be.
Princess Ugg is
the story of Princess Ulga of Grimmeria, the daughter of King Thorgrim and
Queen Fridrika. The Grimmerians are a
rough, warrior people that live in the icy mountains beset by frost giants
(think of them as kind of being like Vikings).
The narration does a lot to establish these rough-hewn mountain people,
even saying that they have no word for “luxury”. According to the narrator, the closest
equivalent is “burden”. One day, Ulga
descends from the mountains astride a wooly mammoth (yes, you read that
right. It’s one of the coolest touches
to the story). She is headed toward
Atraesca, an opulent city-state in the lowlands. There she plans to attend a school for
princesses with no clear purpose in mind except to find “a new way of
living”. Naturally, she doesn’t quite fit
in among the more dainty princesses of the school, in particular making an
enemy of her roommate Princess Julifer.
She has trouble in all her classes except history. She even has trouble with archery,
Grimmerians preferring to throw axes than shoot arrows. Things don’t seem promising for Ulga, but
with a little help from one of the professors, she may learn what she needs to
learn yet.
Though perhaps not as “fairy tale-ish” as most of the stuff
I review in this column, I still quite like this comic. When most comics, TV shows or movies try to
turn the princess stereotype on its ear, it’s usually by taking a stereotypical
fairy tale princess type and making her feisty after the fact. Ulga is a as far from that as possible right
from the beginning, but being the daughter of a king and queen still has every
right to be called a princess. The
setting is far more epic fantasy than it is fairy tale fantasy, focusing more
on royalty, city-states and warriors than the more domestic affairs that pop up
in fairy tales. However, it is not to
the extent that you’re force-fed heaps of mythology and fictional history. Any history is conveyed through narration or
the lectures in history class and even then it’s almost incidental. The art is expressive and tells the story
well. If I were to make one criticism of
this comic, it’s that the dialogue of the Grimmerians is all written in
dialect. For those who aren’t familiar
with this practice, it’s the act of writing the dialogue in a way that’s
supposed to evoke the accent of a people.
It can be off-putting to some and it can seem a bit closed-minded to
others as it often assumes the accents and pronunciation of words for the Northeastern
and Mid-Western United States is the default.
Personally, I’m used to it as I spent my youth reading Marvel’s X-Men
comics which feature many characters who are written in dialect. For reference, it seems that the Grimmerian
accent is more or less a Scottish one (Viking-like characters speaking in a
Scottish accent. I’m suddenly reminded
of Dreamworks’s How to Train Your Dragon movies).
Princess Ugg is a
fun read and an all ages appropriate one to boot. This book came out a while back. However, you may still be able to find it on
Amazon or through online comic book vendors like Lone Star Comics or Midtown Comics. Happy reading!
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