Suburban Fairy Tales

A fun one this week, but is that so surprising? I can only recall one webcomic with serious story lines I've chosen to stick up here so far.

Often when a webcomic reuses characters from other works it signals a disaster in progress. The number of potential hazards is staggering: the swiped characters already have personalities which are difficult to emulate, conflicting references for these personalities, expected appearances, previous knowledge and plot lines are just the beginning. Yet none of those surface here. Fairy tale characters are 1-dimensional, usually with only a single quirk of interest. Thus the characters in Suburban Fairy Tales are free to be developed as needed while still retaining a little familiarity with the reader's background knowledge.

What I like best, is that the characters retain their identities. How many times have you seen sonic & company turned into mundane video-game playing roommates (if the preceding is a large number, which webcomic listing have you been watching)? Even with the lack of character development for the originals, there are allusions to be upheld. And these are certainly met: the big bad wolf is a bully, the frog prince is a desperate outcast to name a few.

And regardless of the characters, these two strips are just clever. This type of joke is what made The Farside an incredible success: perfectly obvious, if only our brains would look in that direction.

To end it off, Suburban Fairy Tales hits another of my favorite topics: a statement that's perfectly true. There's just something about placing your finger perfectly on some aspect of our lives.