Jeffrey Thomas - Twisted Princess

Let me start by highlighting that Jeffrey Thomas is an all-round FANTASTIC artist and I highly recommend that you check out his blog/portfolio if you are at all into Star Wars, Batman or general awesomeness.

Jeff and his writing partner Celeste also have an ongoing series of mini-webcomics here which I highly recommend checking out!

BUUUUUT, this post is about a particular series of pieces that Jeff did back in 2009, which promptly went viral on Tumblr and elsewhere, and justly so...

Twisted Princess re-imagines the traditional image of the Disney princess as something entirely more menacing. This appealed to me on a variety of levels; not least of which is the representation of these otherwise fairly diluted characters in a much stronger and infinitely more kick-ass form. Much of my problem with Disney lies in their creation of sickly sweet characters in the name of family entertainment. The women of Grimm's fairytales were either stupid, evil, or sharp and clever and self sufficient. Theirs is no less one-dimensional a view of women but it does allow for a slightly more realistic view of the world - there are frequently bad endings, bad things happen to good people and generally you have to work for what you get.

However, I digress... this is a truly wonderful series - including some of my favourite fairytales - and I strongly recommend you check out the entire lot. I'm a sucker for an alternative take on fairytales and this one just blew me away!

All princesses have, in their own way, the definite potential to go over the edge as far as I'm concerned... Rapunzel? Trapped in a tower... Beauty? Trapped in a castle. Raised alone by a very eccentric father. Cinderella? Abused by her family and forced to work as a slave in her own home... If you think about it, these women all have the potential to go over to the dark side (no capital letters; no suing, Mr. Lucas!!) and they were just waiting for someone to realise it! Jeffrey has created an individual story to go with each piece, which you can find over at his DeviantART.

These works all have such wonderful creative details particular to each individual's story - especially Alice and Cinderella.

What I do know for certain is that, come the day when I have my own geek pad, this and hopefully much more of Jeffrey Thomas' art will be adorning the walls!