God Save the Queen - Mike Carey

absolutely brilliant. a dark urban fantasy in graphic novel form. i'd put this right up there with bill willingham's fables. the story of a battle for the realms of faery between two famous queens: titania and mab. although titania and mab are both shakespearean creations, they are depicted in "god save the queen" as the representatives of the seelie and unseelie courts. under titania's rule faery is beautiful and light, under mab it it dark and torturous. neither is good of course, i mean these are faeries we're talking about. not quite the cute little disney-fied pixies of contemporary creation. it seems that the one being with the key to turn the tides of the battle in titainia's favour is a young changling who is unaware of her faery heritage. stop me if you've heard this one before. i know, i know, it's been done (holly black, cassandra clare, o. r. melling and charles de lint to name but a few) but i'm not complaining because carey does it quite well. the art is awesome and the story's as good as anything you'll get from neil gaiman. my only complaint is that there's a few too many gratuitous underwear scenes. but then, what do i expect, it is a comic book after all.