Skottie Young On The Magic And Madness Of I Hate Fairyland

Most of us are familiar with the basics of children's stories. A small, adorable child is swept away by means of wanton tornado or mysterious wardrobe to a magical land of talking animals and witchcraft. Once there, the child finds some friends to help him or her find an enchanted artifact or all-powerful wizard and, once the object of the quest is discovered, the child gets to go home.

But what if it didn't work out so well? What if that darned mystical object was simply nowhere to be found, and that child spent decades trapped in that strange world? That's the idea behind Skottie Young's Image Comics series I Hate Fairyland, which see the release of its first collected volume, I Hate Fairyland Vol. 1: Madly Ever After, on April 20.

ComicBook.com spoke to Young about the magic and madness behind his slapstick fantasy series.

For those who may be experiencing it for the first time with the Volume 1 paperback, what is I Hate Fairyland?

Skottie Young: I Hate Fairyland is a story of a little girl named Gertrude who gets whisked away to a magical world of Fairyland, like all the traditional stories that we've all read growing up. Unlike their stories, with Alice and Dorothy and all the other kids who get whisked away to these worlds and are only there for a day or two and come back having learned some sort of lesson and are happier in life, Gert is stuck there for almost 30 years and can't quite seem to find the key to get her way back home. Over those 30 years, she goes from being a six year old to being an almost 40 year old trapped in a six year old's body and is quite mad at this point.

It's really just what would happen if you got stuck in a world of all the things you think you'd love your life to be like as a kid, but it's like that forever and ever and ever and ever.

Can you tell me a bit about what went into designing and developing the world of Fairyland? Are you developing it kind of off the cuff as you go, or have you developed a Silmarillion-like Bible for this world?

SY: It's definitely more free-wheeling. I tried to keep it as whimsical as the ideas I have on the day of drawing that page. If I get to that day and I've written, "She's amongst the crowd of fairyland people," whatever characters come to my mind that day I'll draw, whether it's a cyclops, or a big ogre, or troll, or candy cane people, or a lady made of grandfather clocks, or anything like that. It's whatever comes up that day. I feel that kind of keeps in theme with the idea of Fairyland. This very unpredictable, whimsical place that she's a part of is also kind of unpredictable and whimsical for me to make.

Of all whimsical creatures and landscapes you've come up with for the series so far, do any of them stand out in your mind as a particular favorite?

SY: I really like the Ice Cream Islands. I thought that was a funny place, just because it looks all pretty and very cute and colorful, but it also would be very cold and a harsh environment. One thing that we think about as a kid is how much we love ice cream, but then, once you'd get there, you'd be like, "Man, this is hard to traverse, and it's very cold, and it's slimy and goopy." I thought that was kind of funny.

I liked the Mustache Mountain, which is this big mountain with men with mustaches. And then there was one in particular, I only drew it in one panel, but as Gert was running through some things, she went to ... I think I called it the Leaky Peak, or something like that, and it was basically a mountain range that was made out of the snot of sleeping giants. That day, I was pretty proud of that one.

Again, in the script, I had not thought of that. It was only on the day where my script said, "Have her running through environments." On the day, I was like, "What environments could I draw?" That came to mind, so I was pretty proud of that one.

It's interesting that you describe the story as kind of, "This is what happens if we get to stay a child forever," because I feel like I've seen plenty of think-pieces about millennials and their extended, never-ending childhood and that kind of thing, compared to previous generations that felt like they had to put away chilidish things as they grew into adulthood. Did any of that filter into your mind when you were coming up with that story, or am I drawing a real world connection that you didn't intend?

SY: I find when I tell stories that there's a lot of things that creep into it subconsciously that I might not be fully aware of while I'm making it, or when the initial idea came to be. As I make it and then I look back on the finished product, I think, "Wow, I was really putting some of myself out here."

What I say, mostly, with it is ... I don't know that I was giving a commentary, at least to my mind, on millennials or anything like that, but speaking to myself. I guess I'm Generation X, maybe. I'm 38. I feel like, for me in particular, my life - I think there's a lot of us now - I look back at my dad. You said "they put away those things." I can't remember my dad, when he was my age, talking about entertainment a lot or hobbies a lot, only things that you do when you're an adult, like build things, and mow lawns, and raise kids, and watch sports. It was kind of like anything outside of that was, "That's not what grown-ups do."

For me, my whole life is the exact opposite. I am at home with young children and dogs, so my house is filled with toys, and cartoons are always on, and dog toys are laying around. It's covered in comic books and art books, so it's like this weird Pee-wee's Playhouse in a way, and then my escape from that is to my studio, my office space, which is covered in comics and art books, and the walls are plastered with drawings and paintings, and the walls are green and orange, and awesome cartoons are playing. I'm making that stuff as well. I'm almost 40 and kind of live in this weird, childlike world. I don't know if I want to say it's juvenile, but very whimsical and pretend. It's like this world of pretend, which is awesome and also can be like, "This is a bizarre life," where sometimes it's great, sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's like, "Oh, my gosh. If I hear the theme song to Dora the Explorer one more time, I'm going to lose my mind."

As I thought this very simple, funny idea at the start of it, which is, "what happens if a Dorothy or Alice went away and never came back?" I thought that was a funny concept. I didn't quite realize as I started writing it that that concept really applies to a little bit of my life, and probably a lot of us that are very dedicated to any sort of fandom, whether it be video games, or movies, or comic books. We get very, very, very involved in this world of pretend, and we ride this weird line between fantasy and reality.

(Photo: Skottie Young)

You mentioned how you find, looking back, that you've put yourself into your work a little bit. I think it's fair to say a lot of people first discovered your work when you were adapting the Oz stories for Marvel. Is any part of I Hate Fairyland born from your time working on those books? Either inspired by your love of the world, or possibly even a resentment similar to Gert's at being stuck in that world for so long?

SY: There definitely was an inspiration in that I realized, after years of drawing superhero comic books and I started drawing the Oz books, it really was a realization that drawing more whimsical, fantastical stuff is much more up my alley, just on an enjoyment level. I'm not super good at drawing huge muscles and hardcore, crazy action stuff, or I don't have as much fun doing that. I realized on the Oz books, "Wow, I really like making up weird worlds." I grew up, my favorite movies were The Labyrinth and Neverending Story, so these worlds of fantasy were always really what I liked, I just happened to draw superhero comics for most of those years.

Six years of drawing Oz really let me sink into what I think I'm naturally good at. Again, definitely the idea occurred to me while working on that of, I'm drawing Dorothy every day, and she's coming across these very strange characters, and she seems to just be okay with how annoying they are. She's okay with them never giving her straight answers, or the absurdity of the world, and she's like, "Okay!" She trods on, and she maintains this chipper outlook until she is whisked away, home again.

The thought to me was like, "How would we really deal with this?" We're torn away from our world and thrown in this really weird, probably scary looking world where the inanimate objects now talk, and animals and giant worms talk. Today, it was storming and the sidewalks were covered with worms. Me and my son are walking to the bus stop and we're both like, "This is disgusting." Could you imagine if that was giant, in front of you, and also not giving you straight answers when you ask them questions? They're talking in riddles and rhymes. How would you deal? At first, you'd be scared, or maybe excited. I don't know, but 20 years later, if you're just trying to get an answer and somebody answers you with a question, you'd just want to punch them. "I can't handle this anymore."

It definitely was an examination of, "I wonder what would happen if, instead of when she comes across a gnome here, or Tik-Tok, or Jack Pumpkinhead, and it was just an absurd, bizarre meeting between the two, instead of just being happy, and chipper, and thinking it's hilarious, what would it be like if this just made her so mad that she literally almost loses her mind?"

As writer and artist for the series, do you get more enjoyment out of drawing cartoon violence, or out of coming up with adorable curse words?

SY: It's funny. The curse words were just an accidental by-product of me maybe not having the balls to just go full blown and cuss. Then again, I'm very much an accidental storyteller sometimes, where one thing leads to another thing, and then, "Oh, this happens because of this." Really because I was like, "I don't know. If I really curse with this, then all of a sudden, will that effect where it gets shelved and everything?" I put a mature rating on it simply because it is violent, but I don't know that it warrants the maturity label. I put it on there just to cover myself, to make sure that, hey, I've told you that this could get over the top at times.

The other thing I thought, "You know what? I'll do this because sometimes cursing can be funny." But then when you curse, you feel like you've got to keep cursing, and then it could maybe not be so funny. I thought, if I could just find the closest proximity curse words. Then I realized, "You know what would completely make sense? In this world, there's probably some shaman, or a wizard hidden off in some sort of castle tower that, literally, their only job is to send out an enchantment that basically filters curse words into fake curse words." Who knows? Gert might come face to face with this character at some point, issues and issues down the road, where she realizes, "I've been trying to curse all these years and it was your fault that it's coming out [muffin fluffer 00:13:40] and things like that."

That's fun. It's also a challenge. Sometimes, my work day will just consist of, "Let me make a list that I'm using here and try to think up alternate curse words." That's fun, but I will say, that little kid, juvenile side of me, I have a lot of fun drawing a cannon exploding the moon's brains all over the sky. It's so dumb and silly and fun that I definitely get a kick out of it.

That brings me to another question. What do you have against narrators? After reading the first arc, I feel like you may have had a bad experience at some point.

SY: That was, again, an accidental motif that happened in that first arc, when I thought it'd be funny. The narrator is always narrating you stories, and I thought it would be funny for her to be aware of it. Just be like, "Why are you talking about me like I'm not here? I can hear you." Then, when that happened, it really was a natural thing. When I went to write the second issue and I jumped in time, I thought, "I guess that could be kind of funny."

I ran that joke around the track, and maybe ran it to the ground and resurrected it and into the ground again, but it was a natural joke that I thought, "You know, I'm going to beat this narrator joke to death., at least throughout this first arc, and go with it."

No bad experiences with narrators, just a joke I thought was funny.

Is the key just a MacGuffin to get the story rolling, or is there more behind it? We're led to believe that this is something that most people can achieve in about a day, and Gert's been at it for 30 years. Is she just really bad at it, or might there be something working against her that will eventually be revealed?

SY: No, she's just really bad. The key is like a MacGuffin in the same way that I think most of these child stories had. Fairy tale stories just have something that needs to be retrieved, whether it's retrieve the map, or go get the witch's broomstick, or any of the things that you have in different stories. I thought, "What's more MacGuffin-y than a key?" It's probably literally made at the MacGuffin key factory.

I'm very surface level with Gert. I'm never going to pretend that this is deeper than it is. This is about having a lot of fun with fun tropes and story types that we've played with, that we've read our whole lives, and really just a fun romp, month after month, with the comic. You might see a joke or two pop up in the second arc with that.

Without spoiling too much, the end of this volume has Gert moving up in the world of Fairyland. What does this mean for the second arc? Does her change in status effect how she feels about Fairyland?

SY: It's interesting. The way that I deal with it moving into the next arc will, I think, keep in line with how I dealt with all of Gert's seemingly insurmountable challenges at the end of each issue. It seems like I kind of keep in line with the tone and the speed in which I've dealt with things before. Gert will deal with that hurdle kind of in a similar way, or at least ... Nothing's too permanent in this world, really, because I really want to develop a world that we can explore a lot of, and I want to have time to introduce more characters.

My initial plan with this, when I came up with this idea years ago, was it was just a 48-page little one-shot, and as I thought about it more, I actually thought, "Oh, that 48-page one-shot is probably just the first little story in a sequence of a bunch of little tales of the girl who travels this world." Then it occurred to be more a vignette, which was basically just a bunch of short story, pretty similar to episodic television, where every episode you jump in, you learn more about a world, you travel, and every now and then you might have an arc.

As I developed it more and more, and I turned that 48-page story into a five issue story, but now that I know that the support's out there, and the retailers and the fans are behind it, and readers are behind it, I'm kind of leaning back into what it was always intended to be, which is a really episodic book about a girl stuck in this world. It's given me a chance to tell stories of different lands that are in this world and move away a little bit from the story on rails type of arc storytelling that we do sometimes. That way, similar to the way that I designed the world, I want to tell the stories as off the cuff and whimsical as I can think. If all of a sudden, mid-issue, while I'm working on issue six or seven or eight, an idea occurs to me of where to take them next, I can do that in the next issue, whereas with something that's a little more on rails and is heading towards the plot target ... This is allowing me to really be a little bit more nimble with an overall idea in mind that I'm aiming for.

I'm moving a little bit more into - You might pick up this story and she might be in black and white Noir-land, or she might be in weird Bloodsport, Street Fighter Arcade Land – doing a little bit more, I don't want to call them "one and dones," but maybe just a little bit more episodic nature of storytelling allows.

I Hate Fairyland Vol. 1: Madly Ever After goes on sale April 20.