Fables

If you guys want to read something really fun and multivolumed, you should start either Fables or Y:The Last Man. Fables gets compared to Sandman a lot, and while I do think that most Sandman people would enjoy it, the comparison is a little misleading (meaning, if you didn’t like Sandman, you might still enjoy the hell out of Fables). The premise isn’t a particularly original one – a bunch of fairy tale characters are exiled from their realms by the big bad Adversary and his army, and have set up a refugee colony in New York City. And I wasn’t cluing you into the Adversary’s identity there, since the Big Bad Wolf (Bigby Wolf, get it?) is one of the protagonists. He’s a reformed, embarassingly sexy sort of lycanthrope who chainsmokes and utters gruff one liners when he’s not being a total badass or a “please Mom, can I keep him” romantic hero.

Don’t be confused, though, this isn’t Shrek. There’s a lot of the same sort of cleverness (Prince Charming is a womanizing bastard, and has left Snow White, Briar Rose, and Cinderella bitter and divorced while he attempts to pursue an office romance with Beauty, in spite of her shapeshifting Beast husband), and there are enough namechecks to satisfy anyone with a taste for children’s fantasy – I nearly started cheering when the Jungle Book crew showed up. Really, who else could you get to track an AWOL Bigby Wolf than the kid who was raised by wolves? Surprisingly, though, the Tolkien crowd hasn’t appeared yet, unless there was a cameo in there somewhere that I missed. I’m not sure how Bill Willingham can overlook them, especially if we’ve already seen some C.S. Lewis, Frank Oz, and Rudyard Kipling. I’d love to see the Prydain kids get involved, but that might be asking too much. I haven’t met many other people who loved those books as much as I did, and everyone only remembers the shitty Disney movie. Growl…

So, all these fairy tale folks are either hanging out in a New York neighborhood or at the Farm, where the fables who can’t pass as human are required to reside (and not without some social unrest, might I add). Snow White serves as deputy mayor, and Bigby Wolf as head of security. The neat thing about the series is the extent to which it manages to overcome its own gimmick. I just read the latest volume, 1001 Nights of Snowfall, on my lunch break. It’s not a continuation of the storyline, but rather a whole lot of backstory provided by Snow in a desperate Scheherazade situation. Her first tale involves her own past, and I was so used to thinking about Snow as the Fables Snow that I completely failed to make a connection between rapist dwarves and Snow taking an interest in learning how to use a sword, and that’s usually the sort of thing that I pick up on pretty quickly. The characters are completely their own people, and you believe in them, to the point that you can forget their traditional roles and histories that you’ve been hearing about all your life. I’m still shocked every time one of Bigby’s past atrocities comes to light. Leave it to me to have a crush on the type of guy who used to devour little girls for entertainment. At least I didn’t get any of that for Bluebeard. What an asshole.

And have I mentioned that it’s really fun? It’s not written on the same all-encompassing scope of The Sandman, though both series play with conflated mythologies. Sandman is extremely smart, well-developed, literary, and engaging, but at its essence it’s a gothic fantasy/horror/romance. I personally think it’s a damn good one, and I’ll stand behind it, but I can definitely see how some people would see it as pretentious, histrionic, and messy. Fables is much dryer and more focused. It abides by a fairly straightforward narrative arc, with relatively set rules and a defined cast of characters. It’s also funny, violent, and snarky, without sacrificing some really good old fashioned storytelling. You like the people in it, and you want to find out what’s going to happen to them. I keep wondering when Willingham is going to break down and aspire to some grand literary pretention, because he keeps opening up all kinds of possibilities. When the Arabian fables showed up, I thought, oh god, here comes the Iraq War. Willingham somehow managed to completely avoid telling that parable, though, at least in my opinion, and if I wore a hat, I would remove it for that. He hasn’t ripped off Gaiman’s over-the-top celebration of the value of narrative (and for more information on that subject, please see my monstrosity of a senior thesis), and hasn’t taken the political intrigue and infighting to relevant allegorical levels. It’s an easy read, and it doesn’t want to do much more besides really entertain you. I’m cool with that, because it does a really good job.

Yeah. I just really want all of you to read it, and then we can all geek out about it. Big thanks to Awesome Roommate for getting me into this. You should also read Y and watch Rome, and you’ll have my favorite serials of the moment covered. I think Rome may have supplanted Lost in my heart. Sorry, Lost, but I do still want to be friends.

~ by Anne on February 17, 2007.