Guest Post : Fables - Carmen Brettel

 

 

Fables by Bill Willingham

 Beauty and the Beast regularly see a marriage counselor.  The Big Bad Wolf has a thing for Snow White, to whom, by the way, you never, ever want to mention the seven dwarves.  Or the thrice-divorced, womanizing Prince Charming, for that matter.

And they all live in a charmed enclave in modern day New York.

 For fans of any recent Hollywood or television foray into fable territory—Snow White and the Huntsman, Once Upon a Time—DC Vertigo comic Fables is the addiction of choice. 

Written by wordsmith Bill Willingham and masterfully inked by Mark Buckingham, Fables re-tells and continues on the stories of innumerous fairytale figures in a modern context.  The “Fables” were driven from their various and fantastical homelands by “The Adversary” into our mundane (or “Mundy”) world. 

 

The humanoid groups—including Cinderella, Jack the Giant Killer, and even Bigby Wolf who, after being eviscerated and drowned by Red Riding Hood, agreed to go live in the Mundy world as a werewolf if he promised to be a well-behaved sheriff—reside on Bullfinch Street in Fabletown.  The more obviously fantastical characters—like the Three Little Pigs—call The Farm in upstate New York home (or prison).

 

Spin-offs and such

Fables has its share of accolades.  It’s won 14 Eisner Awards as of 2012, and is proving to be so popular that Willingham and artist Craig Hamilton will be releasing in November a new spin-off graphic novel dedicated to Bigby Wolf’s journeys.  Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and Cinderella have their own series now called Fairest.  Cinderella is a master spy far from her floor-sweeping days in Cinderella, from Fabletown with Love and Cinderella: Fables are Forever; Wily Jack the Giant Killer got his own spin-off in Jack of Fables; and Snow White’s history with the dwarves and Prince Charming is revealed in my favorite Fables publication, 1001 Nights of Snowfall, a prequel to the entire series.

 

Starting at the beginning (with murder)

Because, with the exception of 1001 Nights of Snowfall, most other spin-offs take certain nuggets of knowledge of the Fables universe for granted, new readers should arrive first at the beginning.  That is, at Fables Vol 1: Legends in Exile. 

In this trade, Snow White’s wild child sister, Rose Red, is presumed murdered, and a bereaved Snow White and Sheriff Bigby are on the case.  Bigby solves the matter in a nostalgic, Agatha Christie-meets-Sherlock Holmes style, while witty and tongue-in-cheek writer Willingham reveals various other fantastical characters’ flaws and virtues with a rarely matched degree of sophistication, lust, grunge, and humanity.  Fables is not one to be overlooked.

 

Carmen Brettel is a writer and manager for Studentgrants.org, where she has recently been researching grants to go back to school. In her spare time, Carmen enjoys gardening and volunteering at animal shelters.