Robots Vs. Princesses Volume 1
The Robots Vs. Princesses series, Issues 1 - 4
Todd Matthy, illustrations by Nicholas Chapuis
Dynamite Entertainment
Fiction, CH? Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Sci-Fi
Themes: Creative Powers, Cross-Genre, Dragons, Fairy Tales, Girl Power, Magic Workers, Robots, Twists
***+
Description
In the capital city of Harmonia, four princesses prepare to demonstrate their abilities before the kingdom in a recital, using songs and animals
to perform magical wonders. But Princess Zara has greater dreams than woodland housekeepers or bird dressmakers. She wants to sing down a dragon -
and the only place to find a dragon is beyond the forbidden woods.
In the endless robot battles, the Destructicons and Centurions fight for supremacy... and one robot is tired of it. Wheeler runs away from the
Destructicons, from the war, from everything - off to the forbidden woods, where nobody will follow him. Then a strange sound takes hold of him,
changing him, and drawing him to the side of a young human girl.
But there was a reason the woods have kept the two worlds apart for generations. And now that robots and princesses have met, neither will be the
same...
Review
Exactly as the title and cover promise, this is a story of singing fairy tale princesses and blasting, smashing war robots. Princess Zara and her friends are plucky princesses gifted with songs that work magic, in a world barely a step removed from a Disney movie. The "brave princess" has become its own trope by now, and this graphic novel does little to put its own twist on that, though the heroines are decent enough for the story and world they inhabit, especially to young readers who aren't looking for terms like "tropes" and are just enjoying the tale. Making the music its own form of magic is a nice, if small, tweak, giving princesses some inherent power. The robots are their own trope as well, basically a watered-down version of the Transformers without the transforming (save when princess magic takes hold; when the robots cross into the princesses' realm, they become dragonish beings.) Naturally, things don't go well when Tyrannis, Wheeler's former Destructicon commander, and the rest of the robots tromp into a fairy tale kingdom to retrieve their wayward soldier, but these princesses aren't going to sit out a fight when their home and their friends are threatened. The means by which they fight sort of come out of nowhere, and the explanation for why there are robots in a magical world is best not overexamined. For younger readers, though, this makes for the start of a fun adventure where princess magic and robots collide.