Briar vol. 1: Sleep No More

The princess Briar Rose had it all.  A loving family, intelligence, beauty, and the favor of seven fairy godmothers seemed to ensure she was going to lead a charmed life.  Then she pricked her finger on a spinning wheel, fell into a deep slumber, was found by a charming prince who decided to marry her, but not wake her, and who went on to war with other kingdoms while Briar slept for the next hundred years.  Upon awakening, the princess found that her kingdom was now in ruin and her story, while known, had faded into legend.  So if she wants to save herself, from one of her fairy godmothers who has broken bad in a terrible way, she’s going to have to do it herself.

“Briar” comes to us from writer Christopher Cantwell and artist German Garcia, and if the presence of the former implies that we’re getting a quirky self-aware take on the legend of “Sleeping Beauty” then you wouldn’t be wrong.  Yet it’s still an enjoyable take as Briar and her companions, Norrish warrior Spider and amateur witch Roop, don’t fit easily into the expected fairy tale archetypes.  Briar herself is impetuous, foul-mouthed, and given over to fits of despondency and hopelessness, but still displays a welcome drive to stake out her own claim in this world and fight back against those who took it from her.

Garcia’s art has an ethereal quality that’s appropriate for the material along with a willingness to get as dirty as the material calls for.  I speak of the parts involving giant-rat-slaying and skinning as well as gnome punting and splatting to name a few.  There is a tendency for both creators to go a bit too far into irreverence, what with the gratuitous profanity spouted by all the characters, and sometimes the dialogue can drift a bit too far into speechifying as the cast bemoans what has happened to them.  Still, this first volume of “Briar” is an entertaining revisionist take on a familiar legend that has me wondering where its creators are going to take it next.  Whenever that happens.