By d. emerson eddy — Fairy tales, myths, and legends tend to use allegory and fantastical settings in order to easily convey universal truths and moral lessons to children, often in entertaining and educational ways. What they cover ranges from simple practical lessons of “don't go into the woods alone” to fanciful ideas of why the Sun will come up tomorrow. Those in the latter camp tend to fall apart under scrutiny, but those in the former often have baring on modern life. Such that we have people analyze and deconstruct many fairy tales to further glean understanding, and retell them in modern parlance, giving us interesting works by everyone from Angela Carter to Catherynne Valente.

Folklords falls into both a deconstruction and retelling format, dropping us into a fantasy world that seems possibly governed by a world outside of it that could potentially be our world of science. Through the form of a coming-of-age tale, we get the story of Ansel, as he breaks with tradition and seeks out the titular Folklords while trying to come to terms with visions of technology. In Folklords #3, Matt Kindt, Matt Smith, Chris O'Halloran, and Jim Campbell give us an inversion of the Hansel and Gretel tale while further progressing the overarching quest to find the nature of the world. It's interesting because it takes a story that we're familiar with, twists it, and repurposes it to tantalize and intrigue the reader into contemplating how stories work. It raises further questions of what the purpose and intent of the Folklords and Librarians are and has you wondering further about the moral of “don't go into the woods”.

Matt Smith's artwork is perfect for fantasy. Presented in a deceptively simple, minimalist style it gives the story a kind of open, welcoming appearance that gets a bit disturbing when you see some of the implements of torture in this issue. It helps with the overall theme of this being in a fantasy world, of being a fairy tale, but also something radically different, taking you out of your comfort zone. Likewise the color choices from Chris O'Halloran. There's a rich palette applied, evoking the fairy tale nature of the story, but mixed with Smith's shadows there's a darkness to it that brings out the altered, more dangerous side to the tale.

Jim Campbell nicely enriches the fantasy and storytelling aspect of the comic with a parchment-like approach to the narration boxes. Matt Kindt is also doing an interesting thing with that narration when playing with the reliability of the narrator, and a wish for an omniscient narrator to tell us what's going on, but to perhaps attempt to figure it out for ourselves.

While we are at the halfway point here in Folklords #3, if you like fairy tales and the nature of storytelling, you owe it to yourselves to check out this series. Kindt, Smith, O'Halloran, and Campbell are doing a bang up job that makes you think about stories in a different way, while still providing one hell of an adventure.

Folklords #3
Writer: Matt Kindt
Artist: Matt Smith
Colorist: Chris O'Halloran
Letterer: Jim Campbell
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Price: $3.99

d. emerson eddy is a student and writer of things. He fell in love with comics during Moore, Bissette, & Totleben's run on Swamp Thing and it has been a torrid affair ever since. His madness typically manifests itself on Twitter @93418.