Adrienne, Warrior Princess: Review of Princeless #1 – #4

If you haven’t read any of the four issues of Action Lab’s comic series Princeless, stop reading this review and go buy them.  Right now, I’ll wait.  You back?  Good.  A princess who is fed up with the locked-in-a-tower trope opts to rescue herself, rather than wait for some charming irritating prince to come along.  That’s my kind of princess.

When her mother reads her a fairy tale as a child, Princess Adrienne is aghast, and makes it perfectly clear how she feels about the typical princess.  Cut to her teenage years, where she is now living the “fairy tale” life: locked in a tower by her domineering father The King, and guarded by Sparky (the cutest dragon ever!)  Shortly after berating and summarily dismissing her most recent suitor, she finds a sword hidden in her room and begins forming a plan to escape and rescue her sisters, who are locked in towers of their own.

Adrienne is feisty and not about to let anyone tell her what to do or how to do it.  She is not above accepting help however, which she receives not only from her dragon Sparky, but also from an unwanted sidekick picked up along the way.  It also doesn’t hurt that she receives some behind-the-scenes assistance from a couple of family members who also find her father to be cold and heartless.  In an effort to keep his rebellious family in check, The King moves Adrienne’s youngest sister to a secret location, guarded by the worst of the beasts protecting his daughters.  Adrienne is not a helpless, woe-is-me kind of gal and in spite of the dangers that may lie ahead; she is ready to tackle this adventure.

There is an amusing mini-story at the end of issue #1 that tells the tale of the recently dismissed prince and his education at Prince Charming’s Charm School for Future Kings.  It’s a boot camp for princes who are indoctrinated in the art of princess rescuing, with a focus on swordplay and perfect hair.  The school does nothing to prepare them for the real world where dragons actually breathe fire and have very real teeth.  It’s a bit of symbolic indictment of our cultural idea of the disparate roles generally applied to boys and girls.

While Jeremy Whitley does an excellent job with the dialog, he is clearly trying to get a few clichés out of the way so that we can get over them and move forward with the story.  This is handled well, with bits of snark and amusing tongue-in-cheek winks back to those stereotypes.  Things that would be out of character for a traditional “princess” seem completely natural for Adrienne.

M. Goodwin’s art complements the story perfectly.  The illustrations are cartoony without being overly cutesy.  The panels are highly detailed, and the characters faces full of expression.

I first heard about Princeless several months ago, I was immediately interested, but being from a very small publisher, finding the books was a challenge.  Ultimately I had to go to three shops before I could find all the books, as each would only get one or two copies of the book.  Because this is one of the relatively few family friendly titles these days, if you seek out this book, (and you should) you may need to look in the children’s section.

The first trade for the series, Princeless – Book 1: Save Yourself, will be published in April with additional bonus material involving Image Comics’ Skullkickers.  While I will continue to pick up the singles for myself, I will be grabbing copies of the trade collections to have on hand for my nieces to read when they are a few years older.