Broken Frontier

"They live in the darkness beyond your firelight. Sour your milk. Steal your babies. Trick you off the path with false lights. Long before we decided they were cute, we had a very different idea of fairies…"

With these words, the stage is set for a "fairy tale" of the mythic sense. For indeed, before the Victorian notion of fairies as dainty, winged wish-granters, the Fair Folk of ancient legend could be unsettling and somewhat sinister creatures, wholly alien to human understanding. It’s this vibe and its modern implications that writer Mike Carey and illustrator John Bolton capture in their new graphic novel from DC/Vertigo, God Save the Queen.

Building off a framework established by Neil Gaiman in The Sandman, as well as characters of classical literature, Carey tells the story of an ancient rivalry and a struggle for the throne of the Faerie Realm. Centuries ago, the vindictive Queen Mab ruled the realm with an iron fist, transforming it into a ravaged wasteland. She was eventually usurped by Queen Titania and Lord Auberon, who restored the twilight world to its former glory. Now, several millennia later, Mab is free. And she wants what is hers.

Carey juxtaposes this mythic struggle with the story of Linda, a free-spirited girl in modern day London who falls in with a wrong crowd…one not even human. Linda is drawn into an underworld of self-exiled slacker faeries that live for one thing—a ride on the Red Horse, a drug composed of heroin and human blood. As Linda and her friend Jeff get deeper and deeper into this world, they begin to learn the secrets of Linda’s family and Red Horse’s connection to Mab’s attempted conquest.

Fans of classic literature or of Vertigo’s dark fantasy series will find much to enjoy and many familiar faces in these pages. In addition to the warring faerie rulers, we meet the famous trickster Puck, the drunken emissary Cluracan, and inhabitants of the Dreaming such as Lucien and Nuala. As he always does, Carey taps into the spirit of Gaiman’s milieu and adds his own unique touches to the proceedings. Red Horse is a particularly fascinating and disturbing idea and Carey creates an entire faerie/junkie sub-culture around it. Tying the iron in human blood to the faeries’ famous weakness to that element is a clever touch, as are the slang terms the writer introduces (such as the human donor being referred to as a "drip").

Despite the story’s epic and mythic scope, its themes remain decidedly modern. Addiction, loss, guilt, and estrangement are each examined over the course of Linda’s journey. The story also taps into the no-rules, authority-flaunting rebellion of the punk movement, right down to its Sex Pistols inspired title. However, just as there is always a price to pay when dealing with magic or the fae, so too does Linda discover the cost of a life of always saying yes.

Carey’s story is brought to vibrant and dramatic life by illustrator John Bolton, himself no stranger to Gaiman’s works. Bolton’s paintings shift from the eerie, otherworldly beauty of Faerie to the garish nightmares of Mab’s realm to the gritty, hidden world of London drug addicts. At times, he blends these distinct worlds together or alters his style and color palette to produce dream-like effects that reflect the mood and emotion of the moment. His version of Mab is spectacular in its hideousness, a terrifying hag in a skeletal party dress, a mockery of decadence and courtly virtue. Bolton also does wonders with the human characters (or those we thought were so). Under his brush, Linda exudes energy and sensuality without becoming a stereotypical "comic book babe." Her mother Ava undergoes a startling transformation over the course of the story, casting aside frumpy housewife and becoming more majestic with each page as her glamour slips.

"I see Queen Mab hath been with you," Shakespeare’s Mercutio famously stated. Mab and her world have definitely visited Carey and Bolton and if one reads their work, she’ll be paying you a visit as well. Just remember to keep to the path and don’t follow the lights…