The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 7 - PostScript, The First and Second Collections, 2016

Of late, one of my favourite things to do at a comic convention is to wander the indie artist's aisles and pick up strange and interesting pieces. It's not a habit I've been in for much of my con-going life, which, in retrospect, I'm quite sorry for. I've found some really great pieces of art and of comics over the last few years at conventions, and I wonder how much I have missed at previous cons when my focus was on the boxes and boxes of comics for me to pour through.

(That said, one of my gripes with the Calgary Expo was that there was very little as far as boxes of comics to go through. I had to keep reminding myself that it was an entertainment expo, not just a comic con.)

PostScript takes up a relatively common narrative device of questioning exactly what is meant by "happily ever after" at the end of a fairy tale. Works like Castle Waiting and Fables take up just such a question as well, and what strikes me is that it's a question that can be taken up by numerous writers and the answers they come up with can be strikingly dissimilar, given the commonality of the source material. Which is a roundabout way of saying that PostScript offers a fresh take on what happens after the tales of the Three Little Pigs, the Gingerbread Man, and various other characters embedded deep within the collective unconscious.

Mr. Moogk-Soulis's art is adorable, and there's a danger in judging a book by its cover that one might think that all this collection is is adorable. But it's not. Sisyphus, the third little pig, continually tries to eat Ginger, his baked compatriot. The princess and the dragon have a strangely domestic arrangement going on, one in which she seems to hold the upper hand. The valiant prince is occasionally naked, and isn't really particularly smart. PostScript reminds us, in much the same way that the sadly short-lived TV series Galavant did, that while the fairy tale can certainly continue, its characters have to grow and adapt to the new status quo that's asserted after their gently traumatic tales.

As with many inaugural collections, we can see both the artist and the characters searching for their voices in this collection. I enjoyed immensely the interaction between the princess and the dragon, and look forward to seeing more of them in later collections. Sisyphus and Ginger have a strange and slightly unhealthy relationship, and I am interested to see how that develops. I'm not that interested in seeing the prince develop much more, but that's because I actually think he's pretty great just the way he is. His squire, on the other hand, is wonderful, and I can't wait to see more of him.