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Brubaker, Charles – The Fuzzy Princess: Girl’s Night Out #1
The Fuzzy Princess: Girl’s Night Out #1
So I did my usual “putting the review together” thing where I go to the website for the artist, hoping to put the necessary links on the post (yep, peeling back the curtain here for no apparent reason). It turns out that Charles is so prolific that this issue isn’t even listed, despite the fact that it was put out this year! Is that going to stop me from reviewing it? Nah, especially since I’m pretty sure you could just email Charles and ask for a copy. This is the first part of a longer story, most likely to be collected in a complete volume later. Maybe that’s why the single issues aren’t listed, he might have already wrapped up the story and is putting the book together. Anyway, as the title makes clear, this is a night out for the ladies. I’ve completely lost track of who’s who in these comics; I’d suggest a character gallery on the inside front cover, but this is a man who uses every square inch of issue for comics, so maybe that’s not as practical as it usually is. So our heroes are stuck inside for a night and decide to all go out. They discuss it, and a large pile of clothes is dumped on the floor for them to go through and use. They’ll have to live with their choices throughout the evening, and one of those choices has already had consequences. As for their night out, it doesn’t exactly involve boozy debauchery (are all of these characters adults?), but instead they get some dinner, then head out to an arcade before a movie. That’s where the mayhem happens, but I’ll leave the surprises to you. And it’s left on a cliffhanger, so it sure looks like more antics are on the way. If you’ve read Charles’s comics you know the deal by now: an all-ages read with some jokes and nothing too heavy to deal with, put out at a pace where you could be reading an issue every couple of weeks or so with no problem. There are worse things in the world!
Brubaker, Charles – The Fuzzy Princess
The Fuzzy Princess
One piece of advice I try to give out to people making comics is to make it easy for anybody jumping in late to get caught up, so I feel compelled to point out that this issue is just called “The Fuzzy Princess” with no issue numbers or other unique markers, which would absolutely be confusing to anybody coming in late. It looks like Charles did this issue as a sort of reminder about his ongoing Kickstarter campaign to put a book together (available at his website), which makes that a little better. As for the comic itself, this deals with Kat accidentally getting his tail chopped off and coming to love a new prosthetic tail that, naturally, has a lot more features than the old fleshy tail. We also learn about Kat’s mom, her life and the traveling she did through a variety of odd locales. I’d say more about it, but this is already a comic with 6 pages of story and I already sampled 1 of them. There’s still room for a few funny bits, so if you’re a fan of his previous work you’re sure to like this one too.
Brubaker, Charles – The Fuzzy Princess #3
The Fuzzy Princess #3
Does Charles have a regular newspaper comic strip gig yet? If not it seems like it’s only a matter of time, as the guy has the perfect sense of timing for it and is more than prolific enough to keep up on the grueling schedule. This time around we have Jackson and the Princess looking for a gift. They go into a bookstore, we see the differences in reality for the Princess in how she refers to comics, and we end up back in the Princess’ room where Jackson goes through her dolls, looking for the perfect gift. One of the dolls has a surprise inside, which leads to the conflict that we get for the rest of the comic, so I should probably leave it a mystery. There are also a few single page strips at the end of the book, because Charles clearly abhors blank page, so we get to learn how cars mark their territory (it’s not what you’re thinking), the bureaucracy of the tooth fairy and a master class in blowing bubbles. It’s another pile of funny from one of the hardest working guys in comics today. I mean, unless you don’t like the humor, I guess. Which is what websites are for, as you can just go to his, look at the samples and find out for yourself. You guys already know all that though, so I’ll shut up now. $5
