Why they're great already, and what I'd love to see going forward.
The Disney Princess comics are a collection of short, funny strips starring the Disney Princesses, usually taking place in their Happily Ever Afters (though not always – I discuss this more later). They have the most adorable art style, with large heads and eyes making the characters look younger and cuter and very appealing. (They make a figurine line based on the Princess Comics, and while so far I only have Prince Phillip, I intend to get many more.) I understand much of these comics are the work of Amy Mebberson, though I don't know whether it was all her idea and she just has a team to help her, or whether she just does a lot of the drawing and/or writing. In any case, I must give Amy and any other associates she may have a huge amount of credit for just how well they portray the characters. Every single one whose movie I'm familiar with (which is most of them; I've never seem Pocahontas or Moana and it's been a very long time since I saw Brave) are so perfect they might have stepped right off the movie screen and into the pages of the comic books. This goes for both more dramatic characters like the princes and princesses, and for the humourous sidekicks, all are equally well portrayed.
The Princess Comic plotlines are more the humourous mishap variety than the actual movies with their thrilling evil villains and forbidden love stories. These incidents are more like the sort of thing the Princesses would relate to each other as funny stories when they all get together: “Did I tell you about the time last week we had a clan banquet and Mum made me recite poetry?” “Iago, Rajah and I explored a mysterious cave yesterday!” “We had a snow day in my kingdom recently, and Phillip and our parents and my fairy aunties all went out to play in it, it was so much fun....” One thing I really like about these comics is the way the humour can come from the Princess herself, rather than just from the side characters around her. Pocahontas is the one dreaming this crazy dream she wants Grandmother Willow to help her interpret, Ariel is the one caught red-handed by her sisters with human artifacts, Tiana is the one dumping stronger and stronger hot sauces onto her eggs until she burns her mouth. And we get to see Aurora with her hair all tangled with branches in it, Jasmine with bed head because she's exhausted from raising tiger cubs, and Cinderella with a red nose because she has a cold. I love my beautiful, perfectly polished princesses, but seeing them a little messy every now and then always adds a fun new angle.
Oh, and look out for the “getting to know” features on some of the Princesses! They contain little tidbits about our girls, a couple of things the featured Princess likes and dislikes, one of her favourite people (or non-people!), and a hobby. A lot of these facts aren't even from the movies, but suit the Princesses so well I could happily accept them as canon. Tell me you couldn't see Snow White insisting the Prince keep the highest standards of cleanliness, or Jasmine giving her father a scare by leaping off her balcony when he can't see the Magic Carpet is waiting for her underneath! (But let's be real, if Jasmine were racing across the desert with Aladdin on the back of a really fast camel, he would be enjoying it as much as she would! Who introduced her to adventuring in the first place??)
Let's go through every Princess, and see what the comics did with her world:
Snow White
Snow White's strips usually take place in what must be her Happily Ever After, because according to her movie there's no way all these stories could have happened during her brief stay with the Dwarfs. (Snow White spends her first evening cooking soup for the Dwarfs and dancing with them, the next morning they all go off to the diamond mine warning Snow not to let anyone into the house, that very day the Evil Queen tricks Snow White into letting her in anyway. They didn't have time for any adventures other than what the movie shows us.) But I can easily imagine that Snow White comes back to the Dwarfs' cottage every now and then to stay for a bit and look after them. One strip even specifies Snow White lives at the castle with her Prince now: she's invited the Dwarfs to a royal ball and is trying to teach them all how to waltz. In other strips, it's a little harder to understand how they were happening in Snow's After life – like when she's reading the Dwarfs a bedtime story as if it was a nightly arrangement, or when Grumpy complains the cottage is constantly full of Snow White's forest friends, or when Bashful knew Snow would be at home to let the Dwarfs in when they'd accidentally locked themselves outside in the rain. The Dwarfs all act just like their movie selves and are very entertaining, and it's great to see even more of their fun dynamic with each other and with Snow White.
But we really don't get to see what Snow White does in her Happily Ever After besides look after the Dwarfs! Occasionally we get to see a little of the Prince in these strips, and when we do see him he feels exactly like what Snow White's husband should be: fullheartedly approving of her friendship with the Dwarfs and not even seeming to notice the other castle guests think it's odd, waxing poetic about how beautiful Snow will look in the crown he wants the Dwarfs to make as a surprise for her. Very impressive considering how little they had to go on where The Prince's personality was concerned – I would really like to see more of him! I know they can do it.
There are a couple of strips that we know come from Snow White's Before life, because she's wearing her rags and is cleaning. These were both single-strip stories with just three or four panels, and they were about Snow White and a sculpture of her future dream man she had created. The sculpture had a bucket for a head with a face painted on, and was aptly named “Prince Buckethead”. I happily accept this as canon, and I would love to see some more of Prince Buckethead – as well as some Before interactions with Snow White and the Evil Queen.
I suspect most of the Snow White strips focus on her time with the Dwarfs because, after all, the movie is called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and their dynamic was certainly the most compelling part of the story. Plus it's really all we have to go on; we never see anything of Snow White's relationship with either her stepmother or the Prince! And I still say the comic strips, which expand the Princesses' worlds, would be a perfect place to show us more of the dynamic between Snow White and her stepmother or Snow White with her husband. I know you can do it, Amy Mebberson and whoever else might be working with you!
Favourite Snow White strips:
Snow White tries to read the Dwarfs a bedtime story, and they keep interrupting her
Snow White invites the Dwarfs to a royal ball, and tries to teach them how to waltz
Snow White meets some birds in the forest, and recruits them for an impromptu concert
Cinderella
Cinderella's are probably my favourite stories in the Disney Princess comics. All her strips so far seem to take place in her Happily Ever After – there are a couple featuring Lucifer which are more ambiguous, but there she seems too relaxed and nicely dressed to be living with her abusive step-family. And other strips featuring Lucifer are very clearly taking place in Cinderella's After life – I wonder if that was a straight-to-DVD sequel thing, like Iago living with Aladdin? It seems like a dangerous arrangement for the mice, either way – we see that Lucifer is still trying to eat them; if they're going to live together Cinderella had really better do something about that!
I absolutely love how Cinderella's life after her movie is portrayed. She's in a position of high authority at the castle, responsible for hosting all the royal guests and attending royal meetings and basically well on her way to becoming the Queen our Cindy already is. There's one particular three-panel strip where we see the mice are now her advisory council – which was actually something I had imagined before even seeing it! And there's at least one strip where we see Cinderella (unsuccessfully) trying to deal with the King's rudeness – I will always say yes to more of the King from Cinderella; he is such an underrated character! (Disney cleverly avoided the plothole of the Prince not recognizing the face of the girl he danced with, by making the glass slipper search entirely the King's idea. But the King is talked about so rarely that Disney's Prince Charming still gets flack for that!)
Cinderella's personality, by the way, is perfect – classy and just a little bit sassy, exactly like in the movie. I cannot tell you how happy I am that Amy Mebberson and co did not fall into the trap of just making the early Princesses generically sweet! Cinderella also has a great new wardrobe. I think the outfits we see her wear are from one of the Cinderella sequels, not an invention of the comics, but I still absolutely love to see Cinderella regularly wearing something other than her default classic ball gown, and with her hair most often worn down in that beautiful curvy fifties style. And she doesn't really have any movie outfits she could wear during everyday royal duties anyway – her fancy ball gown? Her mother's dress her stepsisters destroyed? Her maid outfit?? I love when they prioritize story accuracy over whatever's most recognizable.
We also see that Cinderella is still in contact with her stepsisters. I can see that; the stepsisters weren't evil and honestly, I mostly just felt sorry for them. It's not their fault they had a horrible mother who basically confirmed to them that Cinderella was inherently prettier and better than them, who never told her own daughters they were beautiful and special in their own ways no matter what society said. Maybe Cinderella will be able to help her stepsisters feel better about themselves, stop trying to be something they're not, and eventually become better people. There is even a strip where Drizella meets a nice man at a ball, which is absolutely fantastic because I understand there is already a straight-to-DVD sequel where Anastasia finds someone. I really like the idea of the stepsisters finding men who love them, I really do not like the idea of redeeming one stepsister but not the other, and I really hope this fellow, Viscount Luca, will become a recurring character and Drizella's husband! I do hope, though, that Cinderella has found a way of being in touch with her stepsisters while thoroughly avoiding her stepmother. We see her heading to, or at, the stepsisters' home a couple of times, and I really think it's a bad idea for Cinderella to be anywhere near that woman – if nothing else for her mental health! I'm also all for having Cinderella slowly build a better relationship with her stepsisters, but having her call them her “sisters” seems a bit too much.
Prince Charming is great. He's present, and we see so much of his sweet relationship with Cinderella considering we only got like one tiny dance montage in the movie. He's so kind, considerate and thoughtful – twice as touching when you consider the abusive family Cinderella lived with before! Not only that, but we see him and Cinderella bonding and sharing the same opinions on the same things, and finding each others' quirks amusing and charming. Their relationship goes from barely-there to one of the most beautiful Disney couples. I only wish we could have seen some more of that side of Prince Charming which was hinted at in the movie – the part that dislikes royal etiquette and yawns at being presented to hopeful young women, the part which would probably be seriously annoyed at the tiny role he got to play in his movie!
Favourite Cinderella strips:
Cinderella tries to teach the King some better manners
Cinderella's stepsisters attend a ball at the castle and Drizella makes a friend
Cinderella's mouse advisory council
Cinderella finds out she should not have invited Lucifer to sit on a chair with her
Aurora
Aurora's strips are also some of my favourites because, just like all the others, they do an absolutely fantastic job of portraying the same character I remember from the movie – a character I loved in that one single scene she was allowed to have, and was very very disappointed I did not get to see more of! I am honestly so impressed, because it would be so easy to give up, what with the little knowledge we have of Aurora's personality, and just make her generically-sweet, or else make her entire character about sleeping like most fan-made content seems to. Not here. Everything we could gather from that one brief scene that actually shows us Aurora – her quiet confidence in her dreams, her slightly knowing air, her lively interest in the world around her – is perfectly captured here, and expanded to fit story after story. It's great.
Most of Aurora's stories do take place in her After life – which I don't mind, because there's a lot of important stuff there to explore! Aurora was, after all, pretty much asked with no warning to uproot herself and instantly adjust to a totally different lifestyle. The comics don't explore that side of it – I've never seen any Disney Princess content do that – but they do show us such things as Aurora nervously exploring the dark basement of her new castle home, or wishing for a simple birthday as her father throws her a royal banquet. I love to see all the glimpses into Aurora's After life – although I would also love to see more of her Before, mostly because I have so many questions about it! (If Aurora's fairy aunties were that bad at household tasks without magic, how did they eat??) The one strip that is from Aurora's life as Briar Rose also happens to be one of my very favourites, in which Aurora tells her aunties she has “cabin fever” and they go into a panic thinking this is an actual illness. The strip avoids ever calling Aurora Briar Rose, instead having the fairies use terms like “dear” every time they address her, making me wonder if part of the reason Aurora's strips never take place in her Before life is to avoid name confusion. There was another single-strip story that kind of messed up the timeline a bit: Aurora is wearing her Briar Rose outfit and it definitely feels like she's living at the cottage with Merryweather, but from the dialogue, she knows Merryweather's a fairy and that her own name is Aurora!
I have no complaints about Phillip – he's there, he acts like he does in the movie, and his relationship with Aurora is really cute. The two kings still make a great comic duo, with Hubert being the more comedic and Stephan the more serious of the two, and there's even one strip where Aurora's unnamed, underdeveloped mother shows a bit of sass! The fairies are still the same loveable fairies from the movie – they never needed any more development. Oh, and there's a strip where Flora and Merryweather resolve their make-it-pink make-it-blue argument very easily by agreeing to make Aurora's new birthday dress both colours. See how simple that was, fairies...!
Favourite Aurora strips:
Briar Rose has “cabin fever”
Aurora, Phillip, their parents, and the fairies all enjoy a snow day
Aurora explores the mysterious dark basement of her new castle home
Ariel
In distinct contrast to pretty much every other Princess, the vast majority of Ariel's stories take place in her Before life. It's not just the Disney Princess comics that do this, it's pretty much everywhere I've ever seen Disney Princess stories, and I don't think it's any coincidence that it's Ariel the mermaid whom everyone suddenly assumes had such a fascinating Before life and her After life doesn't really need to be explored. Even the strips from her Happily Ever After often focus on her being a mermaid, with Ariel accidentally calling her legs and feet “fins” or telling Scuttle she now knows what a fork really is. Honestly I think Ariel's species is far from the only appealing thing about her; I would love to see all kinds of stories about her having fun and bonding with Eric in her new human kingdom; and I think if mermaids were real this would count as blatant species-ism. But Ariel's strips do feature a lot of her adventures collecting human artifacts, as well as her mischief and disobedience in going out to collect them, so at least we are being shown Ariel's personality and her love of humans. (There's one strip where Ariel goes, “Here's the famous human-tologist Ariel”, a la Snoopy, and I am here for this sort of thing.) There's also a good several strips where we get to see interactions with her sisters, which is pretty neat because we get to see the sisters' personalities without breaking the group image of them we get from the movie: her sisters are normal mermaids who are all into typical mermaid things, and Ariel doesn't really fit in. There are a couple of strips where Ariel is shown to be messing up such typical mermaid talents as instrument playing and songwriting – I know she was always supposed to be missing band rehearsal, but I never got the sense she was terrible at music! Although it is very funny to think about a Disney Princess messing up something like songwriting.
I could stand to see more Eric. We don't see all that much of him, largely because there are so few strips taking place at a time when Ariel would have known him. I think he's portrayed quite well when he is present, but a lot of the Ariel-Eric interactions are about her not knowing how something works in the human world and him not knowing how to react to her crazy suggestions. There isn't really a lot about the two of them having fun or going on adventures together, which you know they'd be doing all the time. (Besides, he's supposed to like her crazy!) We do get to see a lot of most of the characters from her Before life: her sisters like I said, though not King Triton so much, Flounder, Scuttle, and Sebastian. This last despite the fact that in The Little Mermaid, it's pretty clearly established Sebastian did not become part of Ariel's friend group until during the events of the movie, and would certainly not have known about her excursions to the surface or her secret grotto. Oh well, I guess I can see why they'd make sure to include him. He was one of my favourite characters in the movie too (after Ariel herself and Max)!
Favourite Ariel strips:
Ariel helps Alanna with a new dress she's designing, in exchange for not telling her father she was up on the surface again
Eric gives Ariel a present and she thinks the gift box was the present
During her first Christmas on land, Ariel comes up with a new use for Christmas trees
Belle
Almost every single Beauty and the Beast strip in the entire collection takes place during Belle's stay at the castle while Beast and his servants are still under the enchantment, a decision I have never liked. I've already done a post on why spending so much time in this one little section of Belle's life couldn't possibly fit with the canon, but even more than that, why should Belle be cheated out of having her Happily Ever After explored when all the other Princesses get to have theirs? The reasoning is no better than it is for Ariel – so what if Beast and his servants aren't as well known in their actual human forms? Who cares if it's more unusual and interesting to have an ordinary girl waited on by animate objects? I'm pretty sure Beast's servants wouldn't agree that they should remain objects forever because it somehow makes the story more magical... And the middle of Beauty and the Beast doesn't feel like a good place to hit pause and tell other, lighter stories anyway. We're right in the middle of the main conflict and there's all this tension: Will Beast and his servants ever become human again? Will Belle ever be able to leave the castle and regain her freedom, and if she does, can she still free Beast from his curse? What about Maurice wandering around the woods looking for Belle while Gaston plots to send him to an insane asylum; what's going to happen to him?? It's not exactly a restful time where you can just sit back and play out endless new adventures!
The comics do give us some great Beauty and the Beast plotlines, and some of them could have happened in between what we see in the movie: when Belle is startled by a talking book in the library, or when she suggests a new table setting so that the cutlery won't fight. But so many of them could have worked just as well in Belle's happily ever after, once everything was settled. I love the idea of Belle and Beast forming a sort of book club where they read Belle's favourite stories together and Beast has grumbly insights about some of them – if Beast had been a human in those strips, it would have made such a perfect dynamic for Belle and Beast: the Married Life! Or what about the story where Belle and the servants try to put on a play in the library, or where Belle and her new friends stay up all night because they can't sleep, or where they organize the library, or all the stories where Belle says she's having trouble getting used to being waited on all the time? All of those could have featured Beast and the servants as humans! I do wish the comics would step outside the usual Beauty and the Beast comfort zone – they're usually so good about movie accuracy and not sacrificing it for the sake of which images are best known.
There are a couple of strips taking place in Belle's Before life in her quiet village, plus one where Belle tells Chip a story about what a typical day for her used to look like. It's fun to get insights into Belle's old life, what she usually did out in the village, her past run-ins with Gaston, but it's kind of odd the way they make Belle out to be almost nostalgic for her old life. They have her be on friendly terms with some of the villagers, and some of them even help her out in avoiding Gaston – when as I recall, the whole thing about Belle's quiet village was how small-minded the people were, taking everything at face value. They thought Gaston was a great guy because his appearance fit into their conception of what a man should be, and none of them knew what to make of Belle because she refused to fit herself into their mold of what a young woman should be. As I recall, Belle would cope with her life by escaping into a world of romance and castles and princes and adventure – I always got the sense her old village life was the most boring thing ever. And Belle is more than adaptable enough to slip right into a new lifestyle where she gets to live like a princess. Like a princess in one of her books, yet – come on, as soon as the whole prisoner factor isn't a thing anymore, she'll be thrilled! I honestly think this “please stop waiting on me” idea would have worked better for Jasmine than for Belle. Jasmine actually tells us in her movie that she's “never done a thing on her own”, implying she usually has troops of servants and handmaids around to attend to her every need (except the ones involving freedom, space, and privacy), but we never see any evidence of that in the movie itself, so the Disney Princess comics would have been the perfect place to explore that!
Belle is also the only Disney Princess so far whose comics give us semi-consistent villain content, with several of her Before village life strips featuring Gaston. Of course, it's not a particularly threatening Gaston, because Gaston showing us the full extent of evil he's capable of wouldn't fit in with the tone of the comics. Still, I do hope the reason they're fine with showing us Gaston but not the Evil Queen, Lady Tremaine, or Jafar isn't because Gaston is widely considered to be just a big dumb guy and not a properly scary villain. We're talking about a guy who tried to send an innocent man to be locked up in an insane asylum with a very sketchy owner and most likely horrible conditions, just so he could get his way. We're talking about a guy who literally broke into the home of an innocent man after rallying a mob against said man using false accusations, and tried to outright murder him. (The fact Beast looked like a beast at the time does not change the fact that he is a human and this was attempted murder!) Not to mention he tried to force his attentions on a woman who made it very plain she wasn't interested... I'm very happy we got some Gaston content, but let's all make sure we give Gaston the villainy credit he deserves!
I love how Belle is most often shown in these strips wearing either her green library dress or her pink Something There outfit. Her yellow ball gown might be her most iconic outfit, but Belle's pictured in that so often on the merch that it's become kind of boring. Besides, this is what she would be wearing everyday at the Beast's castle – fancy enough for a princess, yet comfy enough to move around in!
One good thing about these stories always being set in the middle of Beauty and the Beast, anyway, is that we get to see a lot of Beast, and his interactions with Belle. Their dynamic is already really good, full of chemistry, you can tell how much Beast cares for Belle – which once again makes me wonder, if Belle already has the same feelings for Beast she will when she's actually married to him, shouldn't the curse be broken and the story be over by now??
Favourite Belle strips:
Any of those single-strip stories about Belle and Beast's book club – poetry, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet
Belle writes in her diary about the trouble the servants and Beast have had adjusting back to their human forms
Belle and friends organize the library
Jasmine
Most of Jasmine's stories take place in her After life, I presume so they can include such important and memorable characters as Abu, Aladdin himself, and Genie. This also lets us see Jasmine in more settings than just the palace – I love it when the strips go full-on adventurous Jasmine. It's exactly the kind of attitude I want to see from someone who was trapped in her home and is only now allowed to be free! There's this one strip where she's exploring a mysterious cave and Iago asks her what about safety, and Jasmine cheerfully holds up a lantern and goes, “I brought this!”... and now this is the only attitude towards adventures I will accept from Jasmine after the movie. I do think it's a bit of a missed opportunity to give Jasmine only After strips, though, because there's a lot of untapped material to play with in her Before. How does Jasmine entertain herself while longing to go outside and see the world? What were her interactions with Jafar (and Iago!) like before she knew they were evil? What exactly did it look like for her to have “never done a thing on her own”, and who were these people (presumably handmaids) who made sure she never did? What was her relationship with her handmaids like, since we know she never made friends with any of them (“I've never even had any real friends – except you, Rajah.”) What was her relationship with her father like, strained from all the rules he made her follow even while they really do love each other? What about all of Jasmine's awful suitors, a running series of “bad date stories”? There's so much potential in Jasmine's Before life, so much the movie only hinted at, all this great material left entirely unexplored. The one strip I did identify as taking place in Jasmine's Before life (because it only featured Jasmine, the Sultan, and Rajah, and Jasmine was in her bed at night with no Aladdin anywhere to be seen) was also one of my absolute favourites. Jasmine can't sleep because Rajah keeps lying on top of her, so eventually she goes to sleep outside and the Sultan comes in, finds Jasmine missing, and immediately thinks Rajah ate her. (And that she's somehow still alive in his tummy – I guess the Sultan got all his knowledge of predators from Little Red Riding Hood! I love the Sultan; he's so funny.) If they can come up with something this good for Jasmine's Before life, I know they can do more. I would like Amy Mebberson and co to get on this, please!
The Princess comics give us a lot of Rajah content, which is great since in the movie he's barely there, being the only animal sidekick who can't go everywhere with his human by riding on her shoulder. Here he's allowed to take part in the adventures despite his size, especially the ones taking place inside the palace. He helps Jasmine raise a quartet of mischievous tiger cubs and comes up with his own way to entertain a bored Jasmine right along with Carpet, Abu, and Aladdin. (Jasmine was bored because she was asked to sit on the throne in her father's place for the day while he was sick. I'm not sure about the cultural accuracy of having a woman do this, especially since Aladdin was around and he's supposed to be the next Sultan, so it might have made more sense for the Sultan to ask him. But I want to say a big thank you to the Disney Princess comics for showing us that Jasmine would most likely not enjoy being Ruler of Agrabah!!) Other times Rajah is actually the source of conflict, lying on top of Jasmine so she can't sleep, or trying to stop her and Aladdin from going away together on vacation – and, I might add, going so far as to try and stop them from kissing! And not as a one-off thing – the strip implies Rajah is now jealous of Aladdin and Jasmine being together, and will prevent them from kissing every time they try. And there is no indication that Jasmine thinks anything's wrong with Rajah's behaviour - blinded by love for her kitty-cat, maybe, but Aladdin really ought to say something. Iago appears a lot in these strips, which means they're meant to take place after not only the movie, but also the events of the straight-to-DVD sequel in which he joins the family. When I first started reading these strips, I still wasn't sold on the idea of Iago being part of Aladdin and Jasmine's household, and the Jasmine Disney Princess Comic strips were a huge part of what convinced me. They do a great job of showing us how Iago could be a part of Aladdin and Jasmine's lives while still keeping his endearing loudmouthed personality – though I still cannot quite accept an Iago who is so emotionally sensitive that he can intuit why Jasmine is upset! And a special shoutout to either Amy Mebberson or whoever on her team was responsible for writing Genie – he came out absolutely fantastic. Pretty much everything he says is something I could picture the actual Genie saying, which – well, I know from personal experience that he's not the easiest character to write! Also I am very aware that not all material written after Aladdin did a very good job on him. Amy Mebberson and co also made the very good choice not to have Genie there one hundred percent of the time, which I believe is not only more accurate to the movie, and with what Genie actually wanted out of life (he was so looking forward to seeing the world!), but also spares us the question of how there could be any real challenges for Aladdin and Jasmine to solve if there's an all-powerful magical being always around who could just zap everything away.
But they need to show us more Aladdin! I'd say he has an average amount of screen time for a Disney Prince in these comics, definitely more than The Prince or Shang, and probably more than Phillip, but I feel like he has less than Eugene, Naveen, Beast, or Charming. But isn't Aladdin sort of the protagonist of the movie?? You'd think he'd have the most appearances of any Disney Prince, and be in almost every story! Especially since this usually seems to be based on how popular the character is... does this mean Aladdin is less popular than Charming, Beast, Eugene, or Naveen??? Actually, the amount of strips he's in isn't so bad – you could just imagine he's off doing important things for the Sultan while Jasmine has some of her adventures. It's just that when Aladdin is there, we don't really get much sense of him. We don't really see what his life looks like now he's reached his own Happily Ever After, what his role at the palace is (we don't get to see him being invaluable to the Sultan's court the way we do with Cinderella), or what he and Jasmine are like together. We don't see him accompanying Jasmine on adventures very much, which is strange because in the movie, particularly at the A Whole New World scene, we get the sense this is exactly what Aladdin's promising Jasmine their relationship will be like if she marries him. We don't get much sense of what Aladdin's like at all! This is pretty much how the Princes are usually treated in the comics, with not a lot of focus on what their lives are like outside of their Princesses, but it feels very odd for Aladdin, being the main character of his movie and all. Here Aladdin is most often seen at the palace – which is good because at least the Princess Comics don't try and imply he wouldn't be living there yet! No matter what the sequels did to retcon Aladdin and Jasmine's wedding date, it would be just cruel to not let Aladdin have comfortable quarters and force him to keep living out on the streets, when the palace definitely has enough room. And it means he doesn't spend all his time running off on adventures with his guy friends and leaving Jasmine behind. Unless that's what he's supposed to be doing every time he's not there. Funnily enough, there was a strip in the Princess Comics with mention of Aladdin being off on some “trip” without Jasmine, and Jasmine being upset about it – thank you, Princess Comics, this is how Jasmine would react if Aladdin were always doing that! He's usually wearing proper prince clothes, which I really, really appreciate because no matter how iconic his rags are, they wouldn't suit his new life married to a princess! But there are a couple of strips implying he still steals, which is very confusing because why would Aladdin steal if he's part of the royal family now? Wouldn't that completely destroy his credibility? Wouldn't Aladdin be in trouble, not so much from the merchants who might be too scared to oppose the Princess's husband if he wants to steal from them, but from the public's opinion of him sinking until they refuse to accept him as their future Sultan? Or from the Sultan rethinking whether he wants someone who steals from his subjects marrying his daughter and becoming his heir? Wouldn't Jasmine, if she noticed Aladdin running from people he'd just stolen from, realize how serious this is and rush to protect him? And wouldn't generous, image-conscious Aladdin want to pay for things, now that he can?
I think it would have been entirely possible to keep the strips focused on Jasmine, while still showing us what Aladdin's new life is like and what their dynamic is like together. Aladdin could be nervous about helping the Sultan run court or make a difficult Prince decision, for example, and Jasmine might plan him a surprise to show her faith in him. I just really feel like there needs to be more Aladdin. It's fine for most of the Princes to just show up now and again, but when the Princess's love interest happens to be the main character of his movie, and a strong, brave hero who saved the entire kingdom and the Princess herself, when the main couple actually had enough screen time together to get a real sense of their dynamic – it's not enough for him to be just there.
Favourite Jasmine strips:
Jasmine cannot sleep with Rajah lying on top of her
Jasmine, Iago, and Rajah all explore a mysterious cave
Jasmine and Aladdin trade items to get each other a gift, each trading an item that makes the other's gift useless. “Great minds do think alike!”
Pocahontas
Pocahontas is one of the only official Princesses whose movie I have not seen (not the only one, anymore, now that they have Moana comics). Because of that, I can't really tell whether most of her stories take place before, during, or after her movie – only I'm not sure I'd be able to tell anyway, because her stories have never once featured John Smith. They never even talk about him. Once or twice the settlers from Jamestown come up (although they're never shown) so I'm guessing those strips must take place either during or after the movie. I know why they do it, of course, why in Pocahontas's strips the white settlers are brought up as little as they can possibly be. Honestly, the Disney Princess people really need to figure out what to do about Pocahontas being so controversial among some fans and yet so beloved among others....
Most of Pocahontas's stories show her interacting with Nakoma or Grandmother Willow, with Meeko along for the ride eating everything in sight, and the occasional appearance by Flit. There's one story where she's with Kocoum, trying to get him to laugh. What I really like about Pocahontas's strips is the way, possibly more than with any other Princess, Pocahontas herself is the source of the mischief and amusement. She's the one dragging Nakoma off on adventures they're not supposed to be on, or dreaming crazy dreams she wants Grandmother Willow to help her interpret, or doing the silliest things she can in order to get Kocoum to laugh. She is the only Princess (apart from Moana) I can't judge how much her Disney Princess comics personality is like her movie personality, but she's great in the comics, I can say that much!
Favourite Pocahontas strips:
Pocahontas wants to go on an adventure with Nakoma; Nakoma insists they collect crabs like they were supposed to
Pocahontas asks Grandmother Willow for help interpreting her dream
Pocahontas explains the settlers' Christmas traditions to Grandmother Willow
(So far, there have been no strips featuring Esmeralda. Or any of the unofficial Princesses, for that matter, no Megara strips or Giselle strips... But come on, I can picture Esmeralda drawn in the Comics' style perfectly, there's a ton of scope for stories featuring her and Quasimodo and Djali and Phoebus, and she used to be an official Disney Princess... Can someone get on this, please!)
Mulan
Mulan's stories can be a little confusing, timeline-wise. Many of them are clearly from her After life – she has the skills and experience of a warrior, and is encouraging her army buddies Ling, Yao, and Chien-Po to keep their skills sharp too. A couple of her strips take place during her time with the army – and one of these also happens to be my absolute favourite! But many Mulan stories look at first glance like they should be taking place in her Before life – Mulan still has long hair and is wearing her green outfit from the beginning of the movie (the one we always see her in on the merch even though she wears it for like less than one full scene), and the atmosphere is more of a girl living a peaceful village life than of someone who has known war. But there's no way any of these stories could actually have taken place before Mulan's movie, because in every single one of these strips she knows Mushu. I don't think there's been a single Mulan comic strip that doesn't have Mushu in it, now I think on it, except one more recent release which features Shang and Mulan training new army recruits. And, don't get me wrong, Mushu was my favourite character in Mulan and I definitely see why they'd want him to be there so much! But unlike with Sebastian in the Little Mermaid strips, where we could kind of suppose that he's just here as the music master and not as Ariel's friend, or the Dwarfs in Snow White's strips, where we can kind of suppose she's just staying with them for old times' sake after the movie, with Mushu there is no way the canon could support Mulan knowing him before the movie took place. The movie includes a very definite first meeting between Mulan and Mushu, with no way we could possibly read into it that she actually did know him from before. It's possible, of course, that after the war Mulan grew out her hair again, kept wearing her green dress, and returned to a more peaceful life – although I really like to think that Mulan kept her hair short, as a symbol that she had fully embraced herself and was free of societal pressures! But if I hadn't seen Mulan's movie and didn't know she only met Mushu during the course of it, I would probably have assumed these strips were taking place before her story and she did know Mushu back then. Also, even if these stories were meant to happen in Mulan's After life, they have the feeling of a peaceful village life and that gets me wondering what Mulan's peaceful village life was like before the war... and then we never find out.
The supporting characters in Mulan's strips are usually Mushu (of course) and Ling, Yao, and Chien-Po, with an appearance or two from the Ancestors and from Mulan's unforgettable grandmother. Interestingly, I have never seen Mulan's mother appear in one of these strips, and her father has never had a speaking role. Shang has, so far, only appeared in a couple of strips, which I find disappointing because we already didn't get to see much of his and Mulan's relationship in the movie. Now that the war is over and doesn't require all our attention, it would be the perfect time to develop it, and wouldn't it have been great to see a bunch of stories involving Mulan's grandmother getting up to crazy schemes as she tries to play matchmaker?? I really enjoy all the stories with Mulan keeping her fighting skills sharp, and Mushu is always getting up to something very amusing – I just think Mulan's stories aren't using all the material they could be, and so many possible scenarios are being left unexplored.
Favourite Mulan strips:
Mulan must learn to beat a man at arm-wrestling so that her cover won't be blown
Mulan practises fighting skills with Ling, Yao, and Chien-Po (I think there may have been two strips like this)
Mulan is Mushu's “lawyer” for his temple guardian performance review
Tiana
If you want to know more about Tiana's After life, you'll find it all here. Tiana's strips let us see how Louis performs his music at Tiana's Palace (accepting leftovers as payment), and Tiana and Naveen's traditions for Christmas and Mardi Gras. We get to see playful banter between Naveen and Tiana (although there's other parts of their relationship I would really like to see – Naveen encouraging Tiana to take more breaks and enjoy herself, for instance!) And we get lots and lots of funny scenarios with practical Tiana juxtaposed against her exact opposite best friend and my personal favourite character: Charlotte LaBouff. I really love the way we get to see so much of Lottie in the Tiana strips – again, I seem to have chosen the most popular character for my favourite! Poor Lottie always seems to be unable to get what she wants out of life, though, whether it's losing to Tiana at tennis or being unable to find a man - I wish the girl could catch a break! There's lots going on in Tiana's After life, but – you guessed it – we never get to see what Tiana's life was like before the events of The Princess and the Frog! I think it would be fascinating to see Tiana as a waitress and the adventures she has on her way to saving up for her restaurant, and you can't tell me she didn't know enough people then to give her a full cast of characters! She had Charlotte and Big Daddy, her mother, her father if we go back far enough, and all the other workers and customers at her two waitress jobs. Some of Tiana's stories I actually thought would have worked really well as Before strips: where she's judging a chili-making contest, for example, that could have been a way for her to get her cooking skills more well-known and build interest in her future restaurant. Or the strip where Lottie's telling Tiana all about her new costume for Mardi Gras while Tiana is distracted by hot sauce – the only thing implying that one took place after the movie is that Tiana mentions her restaurant exists; she even says she's giving up a holiday in order to work! You know, I think the problem I keep running into is that the Disney Princess Comics were probably always meant to be stories from the Happily Ever Afters. But then in some cases, they decided it would have greater audience appeal to show Ariel as a mermaid (I refuse to believe strong, spunky Ariel's entire appeal is being a fantasy creature) or Belle with the enchanted objects (I refuse to believe the only appeal to such colourful characters as Lumiere, Cogsworth, and Chip is that they happen to be under a curse). So then I'm left with the impression that the Disney Princess comics are not meant to be exclusively about what happens in the After, and I start to expect, and want, more of a perfect balance from everyone.
Favourite Tiana strips:
Tiana finds a fly in her kitchen
Mama Odie casts a spell to bring new customers to Tiana's Palace
Lottie helps Tiana make King Cake for Mardi Gras
Rapunzel
With Rapunzel, we finally get a Princess who hits the balance just right. I suspect it's because she has an equally iconic factor from her Before life (that extra-long golden hair) and her After life (Eugene). Half the stories show Rapunzel finding new and creative ways to keep herself occupied while locked up in the tower, unaware she's a kidnap victim. She puts on one-woman plays, bakes muffins, plays hide-and-seek with Pascal, learns a word of the day, meets forest creatures, and of course, finds endless uses for her seventy feet of hair. It really is amazing just how entertaining and varied her Before strips are, considering Rapunzel is always completely alone apart from Pascal. (Mother Gothel, as we never get a lot of villain content, never showed up until very recently, although Rapunzel does mention her a couple of times.) Now there's no excuse not to show Jasmine, who would have the Sultan, Jafar, Rajah, and all kinds of handmaids; Mulan, who would have her family and perhaps assorted villagers; or Tiana, who would have her parents, Charlotte and Big Daddy, and all the people from the restaurants she worked at, in their Before lives!
A lot of Rapunzel's After strips feature Eugene. I suspect it's because he was just too memorable of a character to be left out – although I still don't see why he shows up in Rapunzel's strips more than Aladdin does in Jasmine's. We get some shared fun, a lot of playful banter, and a lot of teasing, though my favourite parts are when the playful banter and teasing morphs into a moment of sweetness. Poor Eugene seems to always be getting stuck with minor annoyances like having his bag painted in bright, loud colours or having Pascal's tongue stuck up his nose! Maximus is here as his proud, endearing self, and even the three little girls who braided Rapunzel's hair show up, as well as at least one of the Snuggly Duckling thugs. More recently, Rapunzel's real parents and Mother Gothel have begun to make appearances – a trend I really hope will continue!
Favourite Rapunzel strips:
Eugene needs a haircut, but is reluctant to let their friend from the Snuggly Duckling do the honours....
Rapunzel puts on different one-woman “plays” in her tower room
Rapunzel tries macrame with her hair – includes an appearance by Mother Gothel!
Rapunzel and Eugene play a spirited game of tag throughout the palace
Rapunzel's (real) parents worry for her safety wandering around the kingdom
A strip with only one panel, and yet possibly my very favourite of all the Rapunzel ones: “Hour three of drying. The chameleon still fails to bring me snacks.”
Merida
Funnily enough, with Merida, I can't really tell if the strips are supposed to take place in her Before or After life. It's been a long time since I saw Brave, so maybe that has something to do with it. But even though a large portion of these strips, like the movie, are about how Merida relates to her mother, I can't really tell if these are meant to be part of the build-up to the movie's events, or just the normal result of clashing personalities that still happens even after the movie has ended. One thing we know for sure, Merida's strips definitely all take place after the birth of the triplets. Merida's stories usually centre around her and her family, with her mother, father, and brothers making for a full, entertaining cast all on their own. We often see her finding clever ways to make the traditional princess tasks her mother assigns her more interesting, watching and attempting to outsmart the triplets, and when she's not doing that, riding off into the woods looking for adventure. Every now and then Merida will be hanging out with the three sons of the clan leaders whom she was expected to choose a husband from. I was always a little surprised to see her treating her awkward unwanted suitors like a friend group! Even with these strips, I can't quite figure out whether they're meant to be taking place before the movie, when none of them knows Merida will have to be marrying one of them yet, or after, once Merida doesn't have to worry about marrying one of them anymore. Perhaps there was something in the movie I'm not remembering that would make that clear, I don't recall if it specified whether she had ever met these boys....
Favourite Merida strips:
Merida is supposed to recite poetry for the clan banquet
Merida spends all day trying to sight a rare deer in the woods
Merida finds a way to make embroidery interesting
Merida's family finds many uses for her talent of shooting arrows so precisely – but then Merida begins to get burned out
Moana
I'm used to the Disney Princess comics stopping with Merida, but a more recent collection of the comics featured several very entertaining strips starring Moana. Like with Pocahontas, I can't compare hers to her movie as readily because I haven't seen it, but I can already tell there's a nice range of strips happening Before and After – one strip has her dad scolding her for going into the ocean, for instance, while another features Maui. And for an extra-special treat, one of the Moana strips included something which I am now hoping all Disney Princess comics will start doing: Moana as a child, obviously before she was the right age for her movie to take place. All the Disney Princess comics up till now have featured the Princesses at just about the same age they are in their movies, no more than a few years before or after. I thought this was just such a welcome venture into new territory, and young Moana is so cute, too! I cannot wait to see more Young Disney Princesses in the comics – especially as this would definitely mean more Before strips for everyone!!! And... hmm... I wonder if we could ever get strips where the Princesses are significantly older? I know the Little Mermaid straight-to-DVD sequel has ventured into that territory....
Favourite Moana strips:
Moana's father tries to tell her about her place in their family's legacy (featuring Young Moana!!)
Moana's mother agrees that Moana is stubborn
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