Princess Ugg - Volume 1
Princess Ugg is written and illustrated by Ted Naifeh (colours and letters by Warren Wucinich) and published by Oni Press. The story is about princess Ülga who attends the princess academy to learn all of the essentials princess skills such as proper table manners, dress making and tea drinking, The only problem for princess Ülga is that she is a barbarian princess from the highlands and is far more comfortable handling her battle axe than she is handling a tea cup.
 |
| Not great with crockery |
Princess Ugg is an adorable story that almost everybody who has ever felt out of place, and let's face it that is all of us, can relate to. Princess Ülga is attending the academy after making a promise to her dying mother and must make the choice of trying to stick it out in a place that is entirely alien to her and seems to be intent on spitting her out or returning to the highlands and breaking that promise.
Now of course the fish out of water story about somebody who just doesn't fit in is nothing new but the reason this story works so well is the beautiful art. The character designs are diverse and include not only your standard beautiful blonde damsel in distress princess Julifer but Chinese princess Jasmin, African princess Phoenicia, gothic princess Desdemona and finally our hero the heavily viking inspired princess Ülga. Princess Ülga looks is very different from your standard princess with her heavy muscles with one of the other princess' commenting that they don't know how "a girl gets that lumpy", clothes made from fur pelts rather than fine silks and riding into town on a giant war mammoth named Snorri rather than in a carriage with a beautiful pony. This is a refreshing look for a princess to be muscular instead of dainty but still trying to learn something form the other side of the coin rather than blindly dismissing it. There is a fine balance between being true to yourself and still realising that just because you don't understand something doesn't make it invalid or wrong.
Although the characters are enjoyable and the story entertaining the thing that really makes Princess Ugg work is the art which is beautiful water colour with a lot of attention paid to scenery and backgrounds. the characters faces are extremely expressive and you can easily see the emotions that the characters are expressing without needing to be told through dialogue.
The dialogue is quite interesting and is especially good at making you hear princess Ülga's accent. The way the princess' talk to each other has a very heavy feel of the mean girls movie with back handed compliments and whispered gossip and I'm sure will remind us all of that one person they knew that could never give a true compliment.
If you are looking for a comic that is mainly story driven with a complex plot maybe give Princess Ugg a miss but if you enjoy a simple story with some beautiful art its definitely worth picking up.
I give Princess Ugg 3 & 1/2 out of 5 war mammoths
Get Princess Ugg here from Oni Press
No comments:
Post a Comment