Comic Book Slumber Party: Fairytales for Bad Bitches – Fantasy Classics with Attitude from Donya Todd, Alice Urbino, Sarah Burgess and Company

Comic Book Slumber Party may exist primarily to promote the work of women creators from across the globe but it also seeks to showcase the work of newer creative voices deserving of a spotlight on their comics. At the end of November of last year I selected the latest CBSP anthology, Fairytales for Bad Bitches, as one of our weekly Staff Picks of new releases here, and I will admit to feeling slightly indebted now to its editor Hannah K. Chapman for gathering together in one place so many artists who have been on my radar for a while now and giving me a welcome opportunity to highlight their material in one column.

Behind an eyecatching Becca Tobin cover, Comic Book Slumber Party: Fairytales for Bad Bitches uses that old framing sequence anthology standby to present seven rather twisted versions of some classic children’s tales, all playfully subverting the standard ingredients of the genre. In these interlocking sequences CBSP slacker heroine Greasy (a kind of canine Tank Girl) finds herself cast in the unexpected role of babysitter and elects not just to entertain her young charge with the eponymous story book of the comic’s title but also to awaken her “inner free bitch” in the process. Lucie Ebrey’s cartooning (bottom right image) is a perfect fit for these sections with her command of facial expression, visual characterisation and expert comic timing exploiting the full comedic potential of the young girl’s transformation, as she is slowly inspired by Greasy’s starring role in each fairy tale.

What is immediately apparent about the distorted fantasies that make up this comic is that this is not an anthology that should be analysed in terms of intricate plotting, involved narratives, or experimental uses of the medium. You’d be rather missing the point if that were your approach. Fairytales for Bad Bitches is about an anarchic ethos, a take-no-prisoners-vibe… it’s a frenetic ball of whirling comics energy that – from Lize Meddings’s kick-ass version of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ to Emma Carlisle’s ‘Hansel and Gretel’ with attitude – asks us to simply go with the flow with these knowingly warped takes on favourite childhood characters.

That’s very much in evidence, for example, in the highlight entry in the book, Alice Urbino’s ultra-violent retelling of the ‘Cinderella’ story (top banner image). Regular ‘Small Pressganged’ readers, of course, will remember how impressed I was with Urbino’s online work in a recent ‘Small Pressganged’ column here.  Her CBSP offering is hardly sophisticated humour but it’s fully in keeping with the book’s philosophy, and with a cracking denouement – which I won’t reveal and ruin for the reader here – that’s such a brutal refashioning of the original source material that it borders on genius. The same can be said for Donya Todd’s unrepentantly crude repurposing of certain dialogue in the tale of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ (right) that serves a genuine laugh-out loud moment, or the defiant finale of the Sarah Burgess (The Summer of Blake Sinclair) beatnik-style re-creation of ‘The Little Mermaid’. And Stephanie Ayres bends the fairy tale definition a little with some inventive panel use in her reworking of the myth of Persephone that puts an unruly contemporary spin on the story.

If there’s one disappointment here it’s that Enoki’s meticulously constructed ‘Beauty and the Beast’ pastiche (below right) was clearly designed for a larger format and it does suffer very noticeably from being crammed into a smaller page size. But perhaps that’s a minor complaint in the larger scheme of things. With so many of the shorts herein revolving around a punchline-style ending there’s a very real danger of spoiling the reading experience of each should I give anything more than the merest flavour of these modern fairy tale interpretations. Suffice to say the initial publicity for the book that promised “action, bikers and swears” was hardly false advertising…

Not so much a narrative as a statement of intent, the noveau underground appeal of Comic Book Slumber Party: Fairytales for Bad Bitches lies not in any complex or layered use of the form but rather in the book’s unashamedly rebellious posturing. It’s also the perfect introduction to a number of artists whose work you may not necessarily be as familiar with – one of whom will be featuring much more prominently in this column in the near(ish) future…

For more on Comic Book Slumber Party visit the site here. Fairytales for Bad Bitches is available here priced £10.00.

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