Briar is Dark Fantasy Boom! Studios' comic series based on Sleeping Beauty. Princess Briar Rose wakes up after 100 years of enchanted sleep to find her once beautiful land turned into wasteland ruled by her godmother Grendrid.
Written by Christopher Cantwell, the first issue was released on September 29, 2022 as part of a four issue miniseries before being promoted to ongoing.
Tropes in this series include:
- Action Girl: Downplayed. Spider is able to hold her own against opponents. She admits, however, that she mostly knows only the basics of sword fighting.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Roop has shown an affinity for necromancy, even successfully resurrecting Captain Bly. Nonetheless, he is a quiet and kind person.
- Big Bad: Grendrid, one of Briar’s Fairy Godmothers, who cursed her to sleep and now rules the wasteland that the land has turned into.
- Description Cut: When they are about to met gnomes, Briar remembers childhood stories about gnomes being cute Friends To All Living Things before running into two deformed gnomes who swear like there is no tomorrow.Briar: Of fucking course this is what Gnomes are like now.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Grendrid may have cursed Briar to eternal sleep so she could manipulate her father and Rodion into conquering land for her. She is, however shown to still hold a slight affection for her, claiming to have chosen sleep as a mercy and intending to simply force Briar back into sleep.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Spider is foul-mouthed and aggressive, constantly snarking to her companions. However, when push comes to shove, she is shown to care about them and has a far stronger moral compass than she lets on.
- Our Elves Are Different and Our Orcs Are Different; Spider’s people, the Norrish, are blue skinned with pointed ears and live in the cold North. What we get from them implied they were once a proud civilisation on the last vestiges of its strength which preaches the destruction of everybody else. While they appear to share the orcs' Proud Warrior Race status, they, in contrast to traditional depictions, don’t appear to be affiliated with the Big Bad.
- Our Gnomes Are Weirder: In Briar’s time, they used to be friendly and happy folks. In the present, they are rude, deformed and violent.
- Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Despite their name, Bog Witches don’t appear to practice any actual magic. When Roop tries to resurrect his pet toad, he is beaten as the punishment.
- Prince Charmless: Prince Rodion was a hero who was supposed to wake Briar up in order for them to marry and rule both their kingdoms. Unfortunately, Rodion was much more into the idea of marrying Briar without waking her up and becoming a conqueror with her father
- Refugee from Time: Briar and Captain Bly are from a time when the world resembled a classical Fairy Tale or Heroic Fantasy, in contrast to its Dark Fantasy present.
