Final Recent Fairy Tale Reimagining Awesome

Previously: Rapunzel offended Mother Gothel and got locked away in a giant tree prison when she found her birth mother!

Also: Met a strange guy named Jack with a lucky bean and a goose he's waiting to lay an egg!

And then: She and Jack had wild adventures on their way to rescue Rapunzel's mommy, saving the day for several folks downtrodden due to Mother Gothel's stranglehold on growth magic!

Also, she fought a "sea" serpent in a lake, and got a pickaxe named Inga that got talked up as capable of breaking "the unbreakable." Yes, this is important.

So sit back, relax, and get ready for the last chapter of Rapunzel's Revenge, "The Shindig."

Yet More Recent Classic Fairy Tale Re-Imagining Awesome

Okay, previously on . . . it started getting really cool with the western elements starting to come to the fore. Also, new character Jack with his goose named Goldy debuted, to much hilarity. Rapunzel beat up a (somewhat inept) gang of kidnappers and rescued the kidnappee . . . kidnapee? Kidnapped kid. But the kid's father decided it was cheaper to arrest Rapunzel and Jack than pay them any reward money, so they had to escape a hanging. Rapunzel doesn't want to keep thieving, so pledges that as soon as her mother is rescued, they'll give everything back, and makes Jack promise not to steal anymore. Of course, first they have to rescue her mother from Gothel. Oh, and Jack bestowed the nickname "Punzie" on Rapunzel. She . . . didn't like it.

So now begins the third and pen-ultimate chapter, "Banditry in The Badlands."

More Recent Classic Fairy Tale Re-Imagining Awesome

So previously, Rapunzel grew up in Mother Gothel's villa until her twelfth birthday when she learned her real history and got put in a prison on top of a tree for four years, after which she escaped with the help of her over-long hair. She managed to dodge the interest of a pompous popinjay who would have treated her badly and set off on the path to adventure.

That was the first chapter, and like I said, it was nice and all, but maybe not that awesome. Not yet. The second chapter, "Rustling up Some Grub," is where things start getting interesting. New characters are added, more action and adventure happens, and we (and Rapunzel) start learning a lot more about the world.

Recent Classic Fairy Tale Re-Imagining Awesome

Retelling classic stories is a practice as old as the stories themselves. Classic myths and fairy tales, being an oral tradition, were told and retold with minor changes and such for millennia before writing was invented. However, mostly, these retellings were aesthetically similar since, you know, everything was a period piece back then. Not until relatively recently did bizarre reimaginings occur. Reimaginings, is that a word? Well, it is now.

The most popular reimagining setting is in outer space, because space is cool. Somewhere behind that is the western. Which is where we're going with today's little patch of ridiculously awesome, Rapunzel's Revenge, by Shannon and Dean Hale and drawn by Nathan Hale (no relation). In case the title doesn't clue you in, it's a retelling of the classic story about Rapunzel, the girl in the tower with magically long hair. Only it's set in the wild west.

And is awesome.