Comic Book / I Hate Fairyland

Our heroine with her minion and only a handful of her victims.

I Hate Fairyland is a Fantasy Comic Book series written and drawn by Skottie Young (best known for his variant covers for Marvel Comics, adaptations of the first six Land of Oz books, and his Rocket Raccoon ongoing series) and published by Image Comics that's started October of 2015.

Once Upon a Time, there was a little six-year-old girl named Gertrude, who wished to be whisked away to a world of magic and joy. After finding herself in the aptly-named Fairyland, Gertrude wants nothing more than to find the Key that can get her home.

Sounds simple, sweet and harmless enough, right?

Well, brace yourself, because the truth of the matter is that Gertrude had been on her journey for 27 whole years. And while she looks like she hasn't aged in the slightest, her mind has been aging from the get-go. And the older her mind has gotten, the thinner her patience has become. Getting sick and tired of not getting any results as fast as she would like, she decides to beat the living fluff out of everything and everyone until she finds someone or something that can get her the hell out of Fairyland.

And all of Fairyland will feel her wrath.

Ran for three years and 20 issues with the main story closing up shop in 2018. The series was later revived in Fall 2022, where Gert returns to Fairyland as an adult to rescue a billionaire's child. He also announced that he would be posting a series of short anthology comics by other creatives called The Unbelievable, Unfortunately Mostly Unreadable and Nearly Unpublishable Untold Tales of I Hate Fairyland to his personal Substack newsletter to be collected and printed at a later date.

Now has a character page. Please contribute.

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Tropes:

Original Series

• Abhorrent Admirer: Maddie in Issue #11 is Gert's self-proclaimed greatest fan, and wants to be just like her. At first, Gert is fine with this, as it's an ego booster, but over time she gets a taste of how she's viewed by everyone else. This is enough to inspire a Heel Realization on her part.
• The Ace: Happy. Gert's taken 27 years and is still looking for the key. Happy's found it and it only took her a couple days.
• A-Cup Angst: Gert, as she's been physically stuck looking like a six year old for so long, and hates it beyond all reason. It's telling that her Indulgent Fantasy Segue involves her looking like a buxom adult. Her adult self in the ending is only modestly endowed, but still better than she was at six.
• Art Shift:
  • In Issue #8, when Gert enters the Fight Tower the art shifts to an Animesque style.
  • In Issue #13, we get a Flash Back/It's a Wonderful Plot story about Larry, rendered in a style reminiscent of Ren & Stimpy.
• Author Avatar: Skottie Young admits that he modeled Gert after his experiences as an adult trapped in a child's existence, specifically dealing with the repetition and overly saccharine nature of children's shows after becoming a father.
• Ax-Crazy: Uh, yeah. See that picture up top?
• Back from the Dead: Issue #17 has Horribella resurrecting a hidden figure. Issue #18 reveals that it was Cloudia.
• Bad Future: In Issue #10. Somehow, as a result of Gert picking the wrong one of two potential paths home, a string of natural disasters devastate Fairyland, culminating in Duncan Dragon destroying everything. Gert's future self comes back in time to warn her and prevent this.
• Bag of Holding: Larry's hat is this. Among other things, it's held a giant magical map, a battle ax and what appears to be a young, fire-breathing dragon. When Gert ventures into the hat, she finds herself in a massive warehouse full of weapons, artifacts, and past victims.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Gert wanted to be whisked away to a fantastical world of magic and wonder as a child. Needless to say, she regrets it quickly.
  • At a pub in issue #2, she wished to be normal for one day without being under Fairyland's magical influence.
  • At the end of the story, Gert finally returns home... and quickly finds herself missing the adventures of Fairyland. She does accept it ultimately.
• Berserk Button: Telling Gert that Fairyland is a good place. She's had exponentially more than enough, thank you.
• Big Bad: Queen Cloudia is shaping up to be this for Gert. She's killed off by the end of the first volume... and then resurrected in Issue #17 as Dark Cloudia, who wants to destroy Fairyland.
• Bittersweet Ending: Gertude stops Dark Cloudia and saves Fairyland, as well as forces the council to live up to their end of the bargain when they try to renege on their agreement, allowing her to finally go home after so long. However, she has to say goodbye to Larry, the one true friend she had through her quest, and, now living as an adult, is stuck in a dreary and mundane life as an office drone and practically pining to go back to Fairyland. Ultimately however, she accepts her choice to come home and goes on with her life.
• Black Comedy: Starts off all sunshine and rainbows (at least in Gertrude's flashback). But not even a page when the series begins, blood and death follows.
• Blah, Blah, Blah: In the very first issue, Gert gets so high on mushroom (people) that she ends up repeating "blah blah blah" for hours. A flying pig that was forced to carry her eventually said "fluff it" and tossed her into the sea.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Than anything Skottie Young has ever done before.
• Book Ends: "Help the floor's eating me!". The first time, it's said by Gert when she was really six years old at the time and was suddenly sucked into Fairyland without her consent. The second time, it's said by Happy when Gert finishes their battle by causing a rift to form under her and cause her to fall in before closing it.
• Boom, Headshot!: The Narrating Moon get half of his head blown off in the first issue, courtesy of Gert◊. It doesn't kill him oddly enough, but it does leave him without half his face for the rest of the series.
• The Caligula: As queen, Gertrude's reign was marred by her bringing chaos and suffering throughout the land through her incompetence and insanity, resulting in her being fired from the position within a year.
• Carnival of Killers: In Issue #15, a group of Fairyland's best mercenaries are hired to kill Gert before she can finally make her way home. They briefly argue over who gets to kill her, but that's brought to a quick resolution when they're told that they'll all be paid equally regardless of who finishes her off.
• Cigar Chomper: Gertrude's sidekick/minion/closest thing she's probably going to have for a friend, Larry the bug.
• Crossover: The special "I Hate Image" one-shot has Gertrude murdering her way through various Image series, including the more grounded ones such as The Walking Dead and Southern Bastards.
• Crapsaccharine World: Fairyland. Looks like a cute and cuddly place on the outset. But some of the occupants are a tad... mature for a place like this. Death and violence are likewise no strangers to the place.
• Create Your Own Villain: You know what we've all said about Gert being incredibly violent and evil? Thanks, Cloudia. Thanks.
• Deadpan Snarker: Larry the bug.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: Gertrude beats Darketh Deaddeth's minions. We're led to believe he's angry, but he's actually impressed and considers her to be like the daughter he never had.
• Deconstructive Parody: Of the tropes common to fairy tales, fantasy and children's media. Word of God states that Gert is like a reflection of an adult dealing with the eventual annoyance they feel at the repetition and overly saccharine nature of those things.
  • At the same time, in a lot of ways there's a good bit of Truth in Television involved, since many fairy tales originally had some darker and grimmer elements to them before they were watered down as children's stories for the modern age.
• Detonation Moon: Both the narrating moon and sun are blown to smithereens courtesy of Gert.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Cloudia is initially set up as a personal nemesis of Gert and the biggest threat to her. She's killed off by the end of #5 and her death doesn't really change much for Gert in the grand scheme of things.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: The Seven Deadly Dooms. They're most powerful evil beings in all of Fairyland.
• Driven to Madness: The sheer saccharine nature of Fairyland has driven Gert past the point of mere annoyance and all the way into wholeheartedly believing Murder Is the Best Solution.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Issue #18 shows that Larry has been doing this ever since Gert was killed.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: Subverted - Happy shoots a rainbow-colored beam out of her hands that sends Gert flying straight through several trees.
• Everything's Better with Samurai: Gert dresses up as one, and fights an army of mushroom people also in the outfits, in #12. Though she keeps mixing them up with ninjas.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Horribella resurrects Cloudia as part of a scheme. This backfires on her as Dark Cloudia kills her.
• Evil Is Petty: For a given value of evil, given that Gert exists, but... Cloudia, Cloudia, Cloudia. Instead of just doing the simplest and most practical solution to get rid of Gert (give her the key and send her back home), Cloudia strings her along and then eggs Gert on into killing her, which makes Gert the new queen and traps her there. And judging by the way Cloudia was smiling with that last taunt, she likely knew this and this was her final middle finger to Gert.
• Expressive Hair: Queen Cloudia's hair is a cloud and can turn into a storm cloud when she's angry.
• Expy
  • Gert is one of Alice and Dorothy Gale, albeit Ax-Crazy. Earlier designs even have her looking just like both of them. A touch of Tank Girl is thrown in the mix as well. But that was likely canned so as would've been a bit too extreme for the tone of the comic.
  • Larry the bug is one for Jiminy Cricket.
  • Keeping with the Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz references, Queen Cloudia has shades of Glinda and the Queen of Hearts to her.
• Fairyland: Where the series takes place, natch.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • For poor Gert. She got so overzealous in killing Cloudia that she doesn't hear what Larry was trying to tell her. By the time she's done the deed, it's too late - the key back the real world is gone and Larry lays out her mistake: If you kill the ruler, you have to take her place. Judging by the way Cloudia was smiling with that last taunt, she likely knew this and this was her final middle finger to Gert.
  • After resisting her Ironic Hell, The Devil decides that the most suitable torment for Gert, rather than an ironic hell, would be to force her to endlessly relive her adventure in Fairyland from the beginning.
• Fat Bastard: The Slug Lord, who is a Jabba the Hutt parody.
• Fauns and Satyrs: Zombie ones in #2.
• Fight Unscene:
  • At the end of Issue #1, Gert faces down a barbarian who's been sent to kill her. Start of Issue #2, Gert's sitting in a bar, using the barbarian's severed head like a hand puppet.
  • Likewise, at the end of Issue #2, which had a village of zombified fauns closing in on Gertrude and Larry. Issue #3 opens with her coming out victorious without us seeing the battle.
• Flipping the Bird: Gert does it to the reader in the title pages of the first volume.
• Foot Popping: A more innocent version. Gert occasionally does this when she's excited, or trying to lull someone into underestimating her. It might qualify as a character tic for her.
• God Save Us from the Queen!:
  • Gert winds up as the new queen of Fairyland. Cloudia herself can count as well, as she not only let Gert's rampage go on for some time, but she seems to have lost her mind too, and she lets Gert kill her so as to trap Gert in Fairyland, condemning her subjects to a life with Gert as the new queen.
  • And indeed, in Issue 6, Gert was awful at the job, with several people dead and the whole world going down the toilet in general. She's fired a year later.
  • After Cloudia is resurrected and becomes Dark Cloudia, she decides to go on a rampage and destroy Fairyland, and the only person who can stop her is Gert.
• Godzilla Threshold: In Issue #18, the High Council of Fairyland decides that Dark Cloudia is such a threat that they have no choice but to resurrect Gert.
• Gorn: Hope you take pleasure in seeing cutesy fantasy characters getting beaten, pounded, and shot at so much so that you can make out their body parts, because there's plenty of that to be had here.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!:
  • Gert uses words like "fluff" for words like "fuck". Mind you, this isn't due to Executive Meddling, but rather by creative choice on Skottie Young's part. The Untold Tales reveal◊ that this is due to a group of wizards that magically filter all profanity, with Gert at one point intending to seek them out but Young ended the series before he could write them in.
  • Averted for the "Fuck Fairyland" variant covers. The original title for the series itself was "Fuck Fairyland".
  • Averted with the final line of the comic, which has an adult Gert in the real world declaring "Fuck Fairyland".
• Grotesque Cute: The bright and colorful Fairyland is being utterly decimated into blood and organs.
• Handwraps of Awesome: Larry wraps these on Gert's hands for the Tower of Battle crucible.
• Happiness Is Mandatory: Larry asks Gert at one point why she hates Fairyland so much, when it's literally a dream come true for every other child who goes there. Gert in a moment that stuns Larry with how profound it is says that her problem is the lack of choice. Fairyland might be fun, but it's fun that you're obligated to have. When you're obligated to do something, even if its something you enjoy, then you eventually start to resent and hate it.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: The High Council of Fairyland's standard response to major threats is to hide underground and wait to see how things play out.
• Heel Realization: Gert in Issue #11, after dealing with Maddie and realizing how she comes across to everyone else.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Take a guess.
• Hope Spot: The start of Issue #4, Larry thinks Gert has finally been killed after being blasted through several trees by Happy. However as the narrator goes into the tale, Larry realizes that Gert's still alive and responds to this by shooting the narrator in annoyance.
• Idiot Ball: Queen Cloudia. Instead of actually just helping Gertrude when it became obvious she was having trouble performing the tasks needed to get the key, her ultimate solution is to try and murder Gertrude via trapping her in Fairyland forever rather than just give Gert the key and spare everyone a whole lotta trouble.
• Improbable Infant Survival: Somewhat averted. When Gertrude first came to Fairyland, she was six at the time and wound up falling from the sky onto concrete with very noticeable bruises such as a black eye, broken teeth and a bone sticking out of her arm (Amusing Injuries might be in effect in this case). However, Happy never seems to suffer any injuries, even in her second fight with Gertrude, save being dropped down into an open pit and it being closed afterward.
• Ironic Hell: In Issue #16, Gert's first hell is apparently finding herself finally back home, with no time having passed in the real world, before her parents turn into monsters. When all this does is piss her off and she declares her intent to escape, the devil responds by sticking her in a "Groundhog Day" Loop of all her time in Fairyland.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: Issue #13 has Larry dreaming of what his life would have been like if he hadn't met Gert.
• It Only Works Once: The prophecy says the key will only work for the one child that uses it first.
• Jar Potty: In Issue #6, after barricading herself in a room with no toilet, Gert starts storing her pee in bottles. The poor bottles are alive, and can taste it.
• Jerkass: Yeah, Gertrude is no saint, but some of the so called "goodie-good" inhabitants of Fairyland aren't exactly paragons of morality either, especially its so-called leader, Queen Cloudia. Cloudia could've actually just helped Gertrude when it became obvious she was having trouble performing the tasks needed to get the key. So you think just speeding up the process would've been a better option and save everyone a headache. Instead, Cloudia ultimately just sits back and lets all this happen for years on end until she too got fed up, but rather than just give Gert the key to finally get rid of her, Cloudia's solution is to exercise a loophole in Fairyland's laws to trap Gert in Fairyland forever so as to finally be able to kill Gert. And when that plan fails, Cloudia eggs Gert on into killing her, which, by decree of Fairyland law, makes Gert the new queen of Fairyland, which is only bound to lead to horrific consequences for everyone. It honestly says something when one of the designated "villains" of the land, Darketh Deaddeath, turned out to be more helpful than Cloudia ever was.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Justified, as living in Fairyland for 27 years has driven Gert mad.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • After getting fired from her position as Queen of Fairyland, Gert is told by Harriet Winter to tidy the place up. Gert's response is to blow the castle up. Larry mildly calls her out on this, with Gert retorting that some things can only be cleansed with fire.
  • This is Larry's initial suggestion to meeting Maddie.
• Little Miss Badass: Gertrude, even though she's Older Than She Looks.
  • Happy is a Sickeningly Sweet version.
• Loophole Abuse: As a guest of Fairyland, the rulers of Fairyland can't simply kill Gert as she is outright immune to their magic. However, they decide that if they bring in another child and she manages to complete the quest, then Gert will be stuck as a citizen and they'll be free to actually punish her.
• Lower-Deck Episode: Issue 17 focuses entirely on Duncan and Horribella. Gertrude and Larry don't appear even once.
• Macguffin:
  • The Key that can get Gertrude back home.
  • Parodied by name at one point. While she was queen of Fairyland, Gert actually did something smart in getting several "volunteers" to comb through the royal library for any other path back to her home world. It turned up several possible results, all printed on a piece of parchment made by Macguffin Paper Co.
• Madden Into Misanthropy: Gert. She's been stuck in a nauseatingly cute world for twenty-seven years, unable to grow up physically.
• Magical Profanity Filter: Gert can't get out a fluffer-lovin' swear due to some magical anti-swearing property of fairyland, though this is never remarked upon. It only comes to our attention once she escapes. Untold Tales revealed that there was a group of mages in Fairyland whose sole task was to maintain an enchantment to filter profanity into "cutesy crap."
• Missing Child: While the story is mostly comedic, Gert does bring up that she misses her parents. So one has to wonder how they reacted to her going missing out of the blue. Happy also seemingly (maybe) being killed before she can go back home probably will make most cringe when you think about her parents too.
• Mushroom Samba: Literally, when Gert cannibalizes some anthropomorphic mushrooms and starts tripping out.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Then again, Gert doesn't seem to actually be able to comprehend any other solutions...
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Darketh Deaddeath, one of the seven Deadly Dooms.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Gert had beaten Happy, gotten the key and finally could just leave. She only literally had to take two steps and her quest would be over. Then Cloudia insulted her one more time and Gert couldn't resist flaying her alive with her new power. This turned out to be a trick however, as since Gert had killed her, this left her trapped in Fairyland as its new ruler per the laws of the land.
  • In issue 13, Gert massacres a village of Mushroom Men to "rescue" a baby, in order to find redemption. As it turns out the Mushroom Men were protecting the baby, who gets eaten by it's supposed mother.
• Not Growing Up Sucks: Having the mind of a grown adult woman and being stuck with the body of a six-year-old has left Gert deeply bitter, as she can't indulge in certain adult activities. Then, at the end, when Gert finally is able to return back home, Growing Up Sucks comes into play, as she misses the old adventures she had and now has to live a mundane life, though she does accept it.
• Nothing but Skulls: Darketh Deaddeath not only has a throne made entirely out of skulls, but his armor consists of various skull-shaped pieces all over his body.
• Older Than She Looks: Gertrude, who looks 6, but is actually in her thirties.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Dark Cloudia wants to utterly destroy Fairyland.
• Orcus on His Throne: Discussed. Gert wants to be an evil queen, but is disappointed to learn that the mooks do all the dirty work.
• Origins Episode: Issue #13 is this for Larry, as he dreams about his childhood and schooling, learning to become a guide. Though it ends up veering into It's a Wonderful Plot territory as it shows what would have happened if he hadn't met Gert.
• Pet the Dog: At one point during a Zombie Apocalypse, Gert accidentally kills a completely Innocent Bystander, for which she is genuinely contrite. Granted, she keeps killing everything else around her except Larry, but she honestly hadn't meant to kill that man.
• Precision F-Strike: The final line of the series has a now-adult Gert declaring "Fuck Fairyland".
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Gert. Though she's been stuck looking like a 6-year-old, being separated from her parents for 27 years, stuck in a maddeningly cute world, and getting turned into a giant diabetic tumor at one point, which was... unhelpful. To say the least.
• Rage Against the Author: "Fluff the World" from Untold Tales has an adult Gert, who has become disillusioned with the real world, discovering a copy of I Hate Fairyland at a comic store and traveling to Kansas City to confront Skottie Young over the situation he's put her in and threatens him into writing a new story where she returns to Fairyland. Subverted in the end when it's revealed that the story was likely just a fantasy she made up during therapy.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Darketh Deaddeth, one of the seven dooms is far more reasonable to deal with than any of the supposed "good people" of Fairyland. He doesn't speak in vague riddles. When Gertrude asks to borrow his power, he agrees provided she can defeat his monsters in what is probably the most straightforward task she's had to pull in years. When she fulfills her end of the bargain, he's legitimately happy to give her what she wanted.
• Redemption Quest: After her Heel Realization, Gert goes on one to relearn how to be good.
• Regal Ringlets: Gert has several giant green drills in pigtails. When she grows a beard while knocked out, the beard also grows into ringlets.
• Revenge Before Reason: After failing to have Gert killed twice, Queen Cloudia decides to try and make Gert a permanent citizen so she can legally torture her herself, rather than try to get her out of Fairyland as soon as possible so she can't cause anymore damage.
• Running Gag:
  • Narrators are not safe around Gert. Even if they're the moon. Especially if they're the moon.◊
  • People reminding Cloudia of the laws of the land when she tries to kill Gertrude directly. Eventually starts turning into a Berserk Button for her.
• Sacred Hospitality: One of the rules of Fairyland is that the rulers cannot harm guests such as Gertrude, who are granted some level of magical protection. This means that Cloudia is forced to resort to loopholes in order to deal with Gert.
• Sequel Hook: Issue #5 ends with Gertrude as the new queen of the land, likely still wielding the doom power she was given and more than likely has to deal with the consequences her rampage has wrought. Happy likewise was last seen falling into a chasm but not exactly killed and, if Gert and hers last battle was any indication, she's a fast learner when it comes to new powers. Not to mention how the Council of Fairyland and its inhabitants will respond to their new ruler, seeing that they agreed to Cloudia's plan in the first place. Downplayed when the following issue quickly resolves it, with Gert getting fired for doing a bad job and causing a lot of destruction both in and out of Fairyland. Once she's no longer queen, Gert immediately gets back into the business of trying to find a way back home.
• Servile Snarker: Larry is clearly fed up with Gertrude's antics but for whatever reason still cares about her well-being and remains by her side ready to help bail her out of sticky situations.
• Shout-Out:
  • HAPUKEN!
  • The Slug Lord is basically a Jabba the Hutt parody. Gertrude even tries to kill him by choking him with his chain similar to how Leia kills Jabba and actually calls it the Jabba Choke. Also has a dash of The Notorious B.I.G. thrown in.
  • The purple and green dragon Gert rides on in Issue #5 resembles a fully grown Spike.
  • "Winter is coming."
  • The alternate cover to issue ten depicts a send-up to the Spider-Man No More storyline's iconic scene where Peter Parker walks away after tossing his Spider-Man costume in the trash can, this time depicting Gertrude walking away in the buff after throwing away her clothes while flipping the bird with Larry's cigar smoke covering up her behind.
• Skewed Priorities: In Issue #18, a mouse questions why Duncan is talking to himself. Another mouse points out that, with Dark Cloudia in the middle of destroying the world, maybe that's not something they should be focusing on.
• Sugar Apocalypse:
  • What Fairyland will be like once Gert gets through it.
  • A more widespread instance happens near the end courtesy of Dark Claudia.
• Sugar Bowl: How Fairyland is described as at first.
• Sweet Tooth: Unavoidable in Fairyland. The typical Fairyland diet is nothing but sugar, sugar and more sugar. Fortunately the magic of the world allows them to live on such a diet without becoming severely diabetic, though Gert had to learn that the hard way when she accidentally wished to be normal for a whole day.
• Tempting Fate: Cloudia taunting Gert as the latter was finally going home led to her first death. Gert killing Cloudia was something she wanted to do for a long time, but it led to her being trapped in Fairyland even longer and becoming its queen.
• Trapped in Another World: And Gert really wants to get the hell out of there.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Well, yes and no - Gert walks a thin line between this, a Butt-Monkey, and a Jerkass Woobie. On the one hand, she's been through a Trauma Conga Line and she makes it clear that not seeing her parents for thirty years has her Driven to Madness. On the other, she's so murderous and sociopathic she probably deserves whatever comeuppance she gets. Then again she never seems to kill wantonly, only those that really get in her way or truly annoy her (she did give the moon a warning after all). So think of her as a pint-sized, cutesy version of Kratos.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Issue #1 makes it clear that Gertrude was much sweeter when she was actually 6 and didn't just look like it.
• Villain Protagonist: Gert, though the people she fights aren't exactly much nicer either.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Gert and Larry. Overtly, they can't seem to stand each other, but there are hints here and there that they do care. The best being Larry actually crying when Gert dies.
• Welcome to Hell: Happy (later revealed to just be the Devil taking her form) greets Gert with this at the end of Issue #15.
• With This Herring: Gertrude was told that her quest would only take "two shakes of a bogglezig", AKA about a day, and was given Larry and a Map before being sent off on her way. From what can be gathered, a lot of her failures seem to come from how she's either really bad at figuring out the riddles presented or that she's never given useful clues/information since Happy manages to make more progress in a day than she has in 27 years.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gert does call Cloudia out on the fact that she more or less kidnapped Gert from her home and threw her into a quest with only the bare minimum of what she needed and never once tried to help her when she was struggling, instead going right into Revenge Before Reason. Cloudia doesn't listen though.
• Wham Shot: Issue #15 has two close together. First, Gert accidentally kills herself. Then the issue ends with her confronting the new apparent Big Bad, Happy, who's now the ruler of Hell (though the next issue reveals this to just be the Devil).
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • Granted, she brought it on herself with her rashness, but Gert was literally one step away from finally being able to get back home, and then she has to kill Cloudia, which traps her in Fairyland as its new queen.
  • In Issue #15, the now-purified Gertrude was also steps from actually finishing her quest before tripping and falling, thus dying from the lollipop she was eating.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Gert kills Queen Cloudia, which, by Fairyland law, makes her the new queen.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Cloudia hires a witch named Horribella to kill Gertrude and her plan to do so involved turning a village full of fauns into zombies. Doesn't work, as Gert is too much of a One-Man Army that they hardly slow her down.

Revival Series

• All for Nothing: King Cloudeus summons all the variations of Gert to finally kill her, planning to then toss the winner through a door to Earth being used by another child afterwards. Unfortunately, while OG Gert manages to kill Adult Gert, she impulsively kicks the kid through the door to stop his whining, trapping herself and leaving both her and Cloudeus back where they started.
• Alliance of Alternates: Issue #6 ends with Past Gert being contracted to kill her future self with the help of various Alternate versions of herself, including Neanderthal Gert, Good Gert, Dark Queen Gert, Tower of Battle Gert and Wastelander Gert
• Animal Eye Spy: Rotwald has a magic sphere in place of his left eye which allows Wiggins to monitor and communicate with Gert while they're in Fairyland.
• Bad Job, Worse Uniform: Gert's fast food job when we rejoin her in the first issue requires her to wear a ridiculous dragon-shaped hat bigger than she is.
• Bag of Holding: Wiggins gives Gertrude a "Backpack of Holding" filled with a massive armory of weapons.
• Bullying a Dragon: In the first issue, Gert gets into an argument with a large, muscular and masculine-looking woman named Barb in a bar, and apparently thinks it's a good idea to hit her with a beer bottle. Barb proceeds to beat the crap out of Gert.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Issue #5 ends with Larry appearing for the first time in the revival.
  • Duncan Dragon returns in Issue #8, as OG Gert tracks him down to use the key he never claimed in order to escape Fairyland.
  • The end of Issue #9 features the first appearance of Cloudia since the revival began, in prison since the end of the first series.
• Cliffhanger Copout: Issue #8 ends with an angry Duncan incinerating Gert with fire breath. Issue #9 quickly establishes that this was just an Imagine Spot on his part.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: William Wiggins wants to gain access to Fairyland so that he can take it over and turn the whole planet into a theme park he can exploit. And sending Gert after his missing son? He only cares because his son's watch will have recorded key data required for this. For his part he's at least completely upfront about his intentions once Gert sees through him. The moment that he no longer needs her, he proceeds to cut her off and leaves her to fend for herself.
• Decoy Protagonist: Despite being the featured protagonist of the revival, Adult Gert ends up dead by her own past self's hand and the story from that point on follows "OG Gert".
• Enemy Mine: Gert gets herself thrown into prison to help break Cloudia out of prison so that she can help her and Duncan complete their journey and leave Fairyland. While the two manage to find the key and door, Cloudia betrays them at the last second by taking the key and escaping to the real world herself.
• Explosive Leash: Rotwald reveals that Wiggins had a bomb installed in Gert's neck to be detonated if she fails or gives up on her mission. He brings it up to force her to take a bath.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Even before returning to Fairyland, it turns out that Gert has been using fake swears throughout her time back on Earth despite now being freely able to curse. When called out on how ridiculous this makes her sound, she says that she knows, but she can't help but still do it out of habit. Her therapist thinks it's a "security blanket thing."
• Gross-Up Close-Up: The first page of the fourth issue has its last panel consist of a grotesque closeup of Gertrude's face with bloodshot eyes, hairy nostrils and nasty teeth.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Gert spent almost thirty years as the most fearsome and feared warrior in Fairyland. Now back in the real world, she's a loser who can't keep a job and gets her ass kicked by bar patrons.
• Imagine Spot: Gert has a couple in Issue #1, first imagining how she's remembered in Fairyland, then of violently attacking some abrasive customers at her job.
• Instant Fish Kill: When Gert goes skinny dipping in the fourth issue, it causes some dead fish to pop up.
• Loophole Abuse: Humans can only enter Fairyland if they've been invited as "Guests" and anyone else will simply die horribly. However, past Guests such as Gertrude can attempt to cross over to Fairyland without immediately dying though they'll have to go through Fairyland's version of Hell first.
• No Sense of Direction: Lampshaded. When given two options for how to get through the Inferno — a highly detailed map or someone to act as a guide — Gert immediately destroys the map and picks the second option. Considering that her poor sense of direction is why she spent most of her life stuck in Fairyland the first time, you can't really blame her. Once again, instead of a few hours or days, the trip ends up taking years despite this, as the guide made the map to not have to remember most of the path.
  Gertrude: I don't do well with maps.
• Obviously Evil: Gert feels this way about William Wiggins, pointing out that he's a billionaire with hired goons and a talking rat that looks like a Disney villain's sidekick working for him. He doesn't waste much time trying to deny this before he just admits it.
• Parental Neglect: Wiggins keeps forgetting that rescuing his son is part of Gert's mission, since he's more focused on taking over Fairyland.
• Revival: The series is a continuation of Gertrude's storyline, following her as an adult woman.
• Self-Deprecation: The recap page of the first issue refers to Skottie Young as a "baby-cover-drawing dirtbag" and makes disparaging references to Middlewest and The Me You Love in the Dark, two other comics he wrote for Image.
• Shout-Out:
  • Wiggins' first attempt to send people through a portal to Fairyland included expies of the Stranger Things gang and the protagonists of Predator.
  • The Getlins appear to be based on Gremlins.
  • Gertrude's Explosive Leash installed in the back of her neck is known as a "Pliskin"
• Skinny Dipping: Gertrude goes swimming naked in the fourth issue. She turns out to be so putrid that she automatically kills all the fish in the lake.
• So Proud of You: Gert expresses this towards Duncan when he incinerates Terribella rather than try to take things out with her.
• Swallowed Whole: By a massive Monster Whale in issue 4, where she spends most of the issue. The reader is lead to believe she spends years in there, before it's revealed she was only in there for the afternoon before killing it with her filth alone.
• Takes One to Kill One: Upon learning that Gertrude has returned to Fairyland, knowing that nothing from Fairyland can come close to killing her, King Cloudeus hires a time traveler to hire Gertrude from the past to kill Present Gertrude (with the help of various Alternate versions of Gert). It also works against them since Present Gert is able to trick most of them into killing one another.
• Take That!: Issue 13 is just a long complaint about how Hollywood handles biopics, as a couple of executives from the Fairyland version of it (who are shown to be completely out of original ideas) talk Gert into letting them make one about her. They proceed to make her sign a contract that gives them all the profits, have a third party write the script without her input, film it without any oversight from her, and turn into a cliche action flick that presents Larry as the hero and Gert as eye candy.
• Take That, Audience!: The recap pages mock readers who aren't caught up on the series for needing to be informed of what's happened previously when they could just catch up on the original series and read what happened in the previous issue.
• Tally Marks on the Prison Wall: When Queen Cloudia is shown to be incarcerated at the end of issue nine, her cell has a lot of tally marks on the walls.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Gert's reaction to being told she has to go back to Fairyland.
  Gert: Fluff my life.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
  • Parodied, while going through Wiggins' portal to Fairyland, Gert literally pukes her guts out.
  • In issue 3, Gert adopts a Gremlin Expy that reproduces by puking up its spawn when given alcohol.
  • In issue 4, after being swallowed by a Sea Monster, Gert projectile vomits as she lands in its stomach, and again later when she tries to eat a raw fish.
  • Issue 13 ends with a protracted sequence of Larry and Gert vomiting after witnessing the movie versions of themselves having The Big Damn Kiss.
• Wham Shot: Issue #10 ends with Cloudia stealing Duncan's key and using it to escape into the real world.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Averted; evidently when Gert left Fairyland 27 years had passed in the real world, with Gert instantly aging up to be a physical adult. This unfortunately meant that she has no education or real-world skills as well as no understanding of the world around her. It's also shown that Wiggins is also dealing with questions from his board of directors about the money he's been allocating over the years to finance Gert.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Upon finally reaching Fairyland in Issue 5, Gert is contacted by Wiggins who informs her that not only did his son make his way back home but since theme parks have gone out of fashion he has no further reason to acquire Fairyland and has decided to cut her off, leaving her stranded in Fairyland without a way back since now that she's not an official guest there's no door for her.

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