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The Courageous Princess, written and drawn by Rod Espinosa and
published by Antarctic Press, is quite possibly the perfect comic for a
child (or better yet, for you to read to some youngster in your life).
Originally a full-length novel published on the internet (and briefly
available as a paperback novel), it is now being published as a series of
fully-illustrated graphic novels. WELL-illustrated graphic novels at that!
Fittingly for the light fairy tale story, the art work is an interesting almost-
anime style. Princess Mabelrose (the protagonist) has definite
Anime/Mange style facial features, with large eyes and pretty much no
nose, and Spiky the talking hedgehog (I told you it was good for kids!)
looks like a cute cartoon character. However, the background scenes and
the dragon (oh, the cool, neat, large, realistic looking green dragon... am I
drooling?) are well-detailed. It's a nice contrast. Additionally, the colors
are well-suited to the mood of the book. In the happy, idyllic (and I admit,
*almost* too sweet) beginning, the colors are soft, almost pastel, calling
to mind happy Summer days of Mabelrose's early childhood in her
peaceful kingdom. Later, when our heroine is escaping the evil dragon's
clutches, Espinosa makes good use of drab greys and browns to
illustrate the bleakness of the landscape surrounding the dragon's castle.
This is all printed on my favorite shiny magazine paper (oh, how I've
missed you, shiny paper!). If you are reading this to a young friend or
relative, be sure to have them sitting right next to you so they, too, can
enjoy this great artwork. It's a style that can be admired by all ages.
The story really is best suited for a younger audience, due to its
simplicity, resemblence to a fairy tale, and the fact that the author keeps
it squeaky-clean. However, this does have a big draw to it for older
readers, too. Sometimes it's nice to sit down and relax with something
where the closest thing to nudity is one large-breasted princess at a ball,
the "violence" is a restricted to some smacking around while chasing a
frog around at said ball, and there's not a trace of bad language to be
found. Good, wholesome entertainment.
Plus, Mablerose is a darned likeable princess. She's not the prettiest, or
from the richest kingdom, or the wittiest. She's fairly average. Heck, with
her freckles and plain brown hair, she reminds me of ME in my early
teens. Maybe that's one reason I enjoyed the book. I can identify with a
princess who isn't particularly pretty or rich, trips over her own two feet,
shows up at the ball unknowingly wearing last year's fashion, and is
totally ignored by the prince.
My admiration for Princess Mablerose grows after she is kidnapped by
the dragon Shalathrumnostrium. She doesn't think only for her own self,
praying that God (or whoever she prays to, it isn't specified) lets her
parents know that she's ok. While at first she prays for a noble prince to
rescue her, she soon takes matters into her own hands. After using her
head and tricking Shalath (as he shall henceforth be known, as the full
name is cool but hard to type) to leave the castle for a bit, she makes her
getaway. And that's not the only time she shows smarts. Instead of
taking lots of gold and jewels from the dragons treasure horde, she
chooses practical items: rope, boots, a backpack and a cloak, and a magic
ring. Unbeknownst to her, each of the seemingly mundane items she
choose also possesses a magic power, and these help her to get away
from Shalath's castle.
Now, a word about Shalath. Normally, I would rant and rail for about 30
minutes or longer about more typical stereotyping of dragons as evil
kidnappers of princesses. It takes something really good to get me to
enjoy a story with an evil dragon (Dragonsbane, a novel by Barbara
Hambly, is an example of a good story with an evil dragon. Read it). In
this case, two things made me forgive Rod Espinosa for having an evil
dragon in his book. The first was: Shalathrumnostrium is one of THE
absolute coolest dragons I have EVER seen in a comic book. He's huge.
He has scales and spikes and horns above his eyebrows and a pointed
tail and wings so large that you could actually almost believe that such a
large dragon could fly with them. And he's a cool shade of green. The
second thing is, Shalath is one smart dragon. He doesn't kidnap
princesses to eat them. He kidnaps them to either ransom them, or so
princes and knights will come to rescue them and he can have a little fun.
Yeah, it's evil, but it's smart evil. Why go out and work to get piles of
gold to sleep on when you can have puny humans bring it to you, just
because you kidnapped one girl?
If you can overlook a bit of slightly sappy dialog, and a talking
hedgehog, pick up The Courageous Princess. You could use some
wholesome entertainment. Trust me!
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