Castle Waiting

I'm late to the party on Linda Medley's Castle Waiting series. I remember everyone's excitement when Fantagraphics announced that they would be publishing a Castle Waiting collection and continuing the series, which had been on hiatus. The collection came out in 2006 and Fantagraphics continues to publish issues of the series. In my opinion, now is a good time to publish another collection, mostly out of my selfish desire to keep reading about these characters.

If you haven't read Castle Waiting, you're missing out. The first story tells the origin story of the castle. You know the story of sleeping beauty--this is the castle where it all happened. She woke up and ran off with the prince leaving the castle waiting for a new king to come, hence the name. Fast-forward a bit, and the only original residents of the castle are beauty's handmaidens, now quite a bit older. They're joined by others who've come to the castle over the years, attracted by its safe sanctuary and mysteriousness. It's a small group that acts something like a dysfunctional family, and over the course of the book, we learn some of their stories. I most enjoyed the story of Sister Peace of the Solicitine Order, an oddly plausible fictional sisterhood of bearded women. They carry out normal nun duties, but are able to get married and be involved in all sorts of mischief.

In addition to the Sister, there's a fairly normal cook and her son, a stork who's in charge of the castle's finances, a mostly silent man who's heart was repaired with iron rings, a horse-headed chess champion, a masked doctor, and a woman who gives birth to a green baby with pointed ears and a tail. All these other characters means many more interesting back stories, not to mention the possibility of other characters showing up at the castle. I'm hoping really hard that Fantagraphics publishes a second collection soon--Medley's writing, artwork, and imagination are phenomenal and not to be missed.