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Kissing Frogs: ‘Mega Princess 5’ Reviewed

We love Kelly Thompson here at the blog, and Mega Princess is her great miniseries concluding this week, with a whole bunch of kissing frogs.  I got to see the last issue, and let me tell you about how great it is.

I’ve discussed before how good this series is, because each issue of the series has been excellent.  The fifth and final issue is no different.

The creative team is the same, with our pal Kelly Thompson as the writer, Brianne Drouhard on art, M. Victoria Robado on colors, Warren Montgomery on lettering, and edited by Sierra Hahn and Whitney Leopard!  This issue’s cover is by Savanna Ganucheau, who is good, but whose cover somehow isn’t quite cartoony enough for my taste for these characters.  But that’s not to say it’s bad.  I always get thrown when I see characters that I’ve seen drawn one way get drawn in a slightly different style.

Mega Princess 5
Still great, but I’m loving what Brianne Drouhard is doing so much it just looks off to me. It’s still great, though!

Spoilers ahead, btw.

So Maxie and Justine, the Mega Princess and Mega Pony, have come to the end of the trail and discovered who is behind the kidnapping of all the princes.  What they haven’t figured out yet is where the princes are.  So Maxie takes the direct route and demands answers from the evil Queen Morgana of Moonfall Castle.  That doesn’t go as planned, and it seems like Maxie and Justine are stuck with the frogs.

Using her ingenuity yet again, Maxie figures out a princess whose powers she can call upon to get her into the castle.  She invites herself in and confronts Morgana.  While Morgana seems to be cooperative at first, after Maxie searches her castle a bit and figures out what happened to the princes, Morgana attempts to put a stop to Maxie.  Maxie doesn’t go down that easily, though, and after a brief, hair-raising scuffle, Maxie has the upper hand.

After what appears to be a bit of an homage to an upside down interrogation scene in Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, we have Maxie talk things out with Morgana, empathizing with her and trying to help her find a solution to her problems, even as she tries to figure out how to change the frogs back into princes.  (Hey, Morgana didn’t learn how to turn the frogs back because who would want to turn them back?!)  Maxie displays her brains (her best princess power) yet again and solves the problems.  We get the morals of the story, kissin’ frogs, a reunion back home, and a promise of further adventures.  And yeah, I want more!!!

Kelly’s scripting and dialogue is really nice, and Brianne Drouhard really delivers with the art.  She’s grown a lot even in the space of the 100+ pages of the series, and the book is great looking.  Nicely cartoony when it needs to be, interesting page layouts, and great looks to all the characters. Really, if you see the examples from the book in this post and don’t love it, I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!

Mega Princess 5 frogs
Maxie knows!

I love the aesthetic of Morgana, with her love of purple, her long nails, and her thigh high boots, the combination of which gives her a Star Sapphire look without completely aping it.  (Hey, me likee bad girls, ok?)

Mega Princess 5
Don’t judge me.

Robado’s colors are fantastic as well, particularly the way the purple shadow hangs over Maxie once Morgana finds her deep in the castle.

Mega Princess 5
Someone’s in trouble.

I’m still not sure if Drouhard or Montgomery is doing the “background” lettering (the frogs and their ribbits, for example — although from something Montgomery tweeted, I think it was him), but whoever is doing it is great.  Really gives the page character.

Mega Princess 5
Such a great panel! So many feels!

There’s what appears to be a slight plot hole, in that Maxie is unable to understand the frogs (she got the powers to understand animals from her fairy godmother Amber, y’know), but my no-prize answer is that since the frogs technically weren’t actually animals, she was therefore unable to recognize their ribbits as language.  Sounds good to me, anyway!

Buy this book.  Either get the individual issues from your local shop, or order the trade from this month’s Previews (Previews code APR171430), or preorder it over at Amazon (which kicks back a bit to us here, so maybe go for that option!).  Get this book for all the kids in your life.  Hand it over to people who don’t think comics are anything more than superheroes.  Give it to people who love fairy tales, as this is a book that should join the canon of fairy tales.  I want more adventures of Maxie and Justine, dang it, and that means everyone needs to buy as many copies as possible!  Do it, I guarantee you that you will love this book if you love comics!

Mega Princess 5
No lie!

8 Comments

  1. Corrin Radd

    So sad that this has no comments. It’s a great book that I hope is able to continue–I’m eager to read more. This is one of several comics that I only picked up to read with my kids, but then ended up enjoying so much that I would continue to read it even if they weren’t interested (thogh they are interested–they love it).

    1. Le Messor

      “So sad that this has no comments.”

      Sorry… I didn’t get my copy until today, and I didn’t want to read a potentially (and, it turns out, actually) spoilerific review until I read the book.

        1. Le Messor

          I’m not worried that it was spoilery – I expected that, so I just left the announcement in my inbox without clicking the link until I’d read the comic.

          I did the same thing last issue, but had no reason to mention it. (iirc, I read #3 before you posted about it. Don’t remember about #2, and it was your article on #1 that got me reading the series in the first place.)

  2. Le Messor

    “Maxie doesn’t go down that easily, though, and after a brief, hair-raising scuffle”

    LoL! I see what you did there.

    “Maxie figures out a princess whose powers she can call upon to get her into the castle.”

    … but didn’t the ‘power’ belong to the princes in that story? (And I put power in quotes because wasn’t it actually a curse placed on them?)

    “my no-prize answer is that since the frogs technically weren’t actually animals, she was therefore unable to recognize their ribbits as language”

    Further, maybe they didn’t know the language, so their ribbits maybe really were just ribbits?

    “After what appears to be a bit of an homage to an upside down interrogation scene in Miller’s Dark Knight Returns,”

    Ooh, hey, I didn’t notice that – but it’s been a long time since I read that one.

  3. Hmm, I didn’t know/remember about the power from the original fairy tale. I don’t know!

    Ah, as in, they were just saying “ribbit” because they knew that’s what frogs say? Interesting thought!

    And there are some scenes that just stick with you. I don’t honestly know if it was an intentional DKR homage, but it’s great if it was or if it wasn’t!

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