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ULGA: or, How I Learned I Couldn’t Solve All My Problems by Hacking Off Someone’s Head in “Princess Ugg” #4 [Review]

By | September 26th, 2014
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Obstinate unicorns, rude girls, disastrous fashion choices, and elegant equestrian competitions are all thrown into the mix as Ted Naifeh’s “Princess Ugg” reaches its halfway point. Meanwhile, there’s danger starting to brew just beyond the mountains, though who’s to say if that’s more or less terrifying than mean girls rules.

Written and Illustrated by Ted Naifeh
Colored by Warren Wucinich

Ulga offers to help her roommate Julifer with her prized Sylvan unicorn in order to practice the art of diplomacy, but the unicorn is spoiled and undisciplined, and Julifer refuses to do anything about it. With a riding competition fast approaching, Ulga decides to take matters into her own hands.

There’s a reason why stories centered around school have such an enormous presence in the narrative universe. Much like family sagas, school adventures have this immediate empathetic connection, because practically everyone has had some odd or bizarre or exciting experience in school. And since schools primarily are all about learning how to see and live and deal with the world, there’s plenty of opportunities for creators to, you know, explore how we live and interact with each other.

Ted Naifeh’s “Princess Ugg” isn’t a complicated story: it centers around a barbarian princess named Ulga, who comes down from the high mountains to attend this school for princesses. Obviously, Ulga hails from a very different background than the usual bout of princess students, leaving Naifeh with plenty of opportunity to explore fish-out-of-water/culture shock situations. The whole series has almost been as if Merida from Brave decided she was going to attend Shiz. So even though this is a fantasy series, and it comes complete with many of the fantastical elements we expect out of the genre — giants, unicorns, talking birds, magic — Naifeh is far more interested in delivering a comedy of manners, a social satire of sorts. The book is charming, funny, and consistently entertaining.

Issue #4 centers around Ulga and Julifer (Ulga’s sworn nemesis, the head Mean Girl of Princess Finishing School, the most Disney princess-esque character of all the other princesses) as they prepare for The All Fiefdom Royal Equetition. Julifer plans to compete with her pure-bred unicorn, who just  happens to be a massive jerk. And Ulga, trying to not make herself seem so out of touch in the school, is along for the ride, trying to help. She’s also working with one of the teachers to try to uncover some secret going-ons about the place.

Naifeh provides plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. I didn’t think the image of a skinned unicorn being roasted over an open pit would have me in as much hysterics as it did, but there you have it. Naifeh’s a seasoned pro and his sense of pacing and transition is top notch as well: a later scene in the chapter has the two princesses butting heads, and in the next panel, shows two equestrian competitors crashing into each other.

His line work isn’t flashy or vibrant like the more animated attempts of Jeff Smith or Grace Ellis. His character designs have a fluid look while he reserves the more sketchy and jerkier lines for their costumes and the backgrounds, evoking the kind of fantastical image you see out of Charles Vess or P. Craig Russell’s fairy tale works. There’s a stillness that actually works for the story in the art design, evoking this storybook atmosphere. He can also sell so much of the setting and the atmosphere with just a few representative strokes of the brush. He knows exactly what to show in a scene to deliver it the best, and there was never a time I was unsure of where a character was standing within their environment, or confused about what was being shown.

Warren Wucinich’s color palette favors warmer hues, with a softer touch, again nodding toward that storybook sensibility. I think a lot of the reasons why the humor works and why jokes like a unicorn roasting over a spit land as well as they do, is that Wucinich doesn’t have this Loony Toons vibrancy to his color choices, and the ridiculousness of the sequence doesn’t take you out from the rest of Naifeh’s world.

Originally designed as a graphic novel, “Princess Ugg” #4 is about the mid-point for the series, and the only thing that’s deterring it from being truly classic is Naifeh’s own lack of urgency in the story. Don’t get me wrong, issue #4 is a satisfying addition to the narrative and we’re definitely shaking our heads along with Ugla as she watches Julifer’s horrible attempts to train her unicorn. Naifeh isn’t afraid to not put his heroine in the best light, which helps make her growth and realizations and maturity more poignant. I’m still not entirely sold on his weird Scottish (?) accent for her, but he gets some jokes out of it, so it’s not like the device goes wasted.

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But there doesn’t still seem to be much of a wider picture. We get throwaway lines about giants coming back into the mountains and Ulga refusing to give up on her educational quest, yet still very little about what she’s doing within this cavalcade of princesses. I appreciate there’s this Game of Thrones-y approach with Ulga learning that not all battles are fought with giant axes or swords, and that helps differentiate this story from other Mean Girl-esque stories, but I haven’t noticed much setup for what she’s going to do with this information. I guess Naifeh’s script has a resistance to it, where it knows it wants to stay focused on the character driven moments and acknowledge more of their interactions with each other.

Still, it feels like there’s this other story hiding in the background that I’m sure will come out in far more clarity as the series goes on its downward slope.

Regardless, “Princess Ugg” remains a charming, consistent, humourus, and fun series. Naifeh’s art helps immerse you into this world and Wucinich gives it that final sell. It’s a perfect example of how even a story that doesn’t have the most original approach can still be rewarding and wonderful when delivered by someone who knows what their doing. Ted Naifeh knows what he’s doing.

Final Verdict: 7.8 – Fun, clever, and entertaining, “Princess Ugg” #4 provides a satisfying romp in preparation of an equestrian competition. I think that once this whole story is collected and delivered as a whole, these odd pacing choices will be moot points.


Matthew Garcia

Matt hails from Colorado. He can be found on Twitter as @MattSG.

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