Fables #124 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Shawn McManus (art)

The Story: A flightless monkey and inch-tall dame prove that anyone can be heroes.

The Review: In all the many issues in which Bufkin’s adventures in Oz appeared, I’m not sure Willingham ever succeeded in making me care about any of it.  Reading Fables with that back-up was a bit like inviting your one friend with a kid to a dinner party; you wonder why they won’t choose a better opportunity to cart the extra baggage around while tolerating its obtrusive presence as well as you can.

Maybe if Willingham had simply collected all the Ozian material into one issue, it would’ve been easier to care, but I tend to doubt it.  Except for the one moment where Bufkin was right on the verge of getting hanged, there really wasn’t much drama to be had from his rather breezy and whimsical uprising.  Even from a comedic standpoint, “A Revolution in Oz” felt disjointed and a bit pointless, more of a series of random gags than an actual plot.

Fables #121 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Steve Leialoha (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: A dream come true for the lazy cook.

The Review: If I could sum up the message of Fables, given what I’ve read and what I know, it’s this: there is no “happily ever after.”  For us Mundys, our mortal lives give us the chance to end on a happy note, but for the Fables, living indefinitely means that inevitably, every happy moment will give way to tragedy.  The only thing that keeps this series from being a complete downer, then, is the flipside: even the lowest points will turn around to happiness again.

This constant cycle of joy and grief has the side-effect of giving our Fables wisdom and sense beyond the average Mundy, given enough reflection.  Therese goes through such a process here, dwelling on her misdeeds and its consequences, beating herself up for the way things ended up for her and Darien.  At the end of it, she does manage to achieve a kind of redemption, but the taint of the past lingers on, and she knows it: “Murderers don’t get forgiven just because we promise to be good from now on.”

Fables #120 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Steve Leialoha (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: Evidently, no one ever told Dare about the downsides of heroism.

The Review: I have to confess that when I first picked up this series, I almost regretted it shortly afterward.  The story arc running at that time involved the Fables anxiously awaiting their doom by Mister Dark, only to have the North Wind step in and save them all at the last minute.  This development was deeply disappointing as it just sucked away all the tension Willingham built up over this impossible foe, basically concluding with two godlike immortals fading out quietly.

I figured if this was the kind of finish I could expect on a storyline with stakes this big, what could I expect with later arcs that had less scale?  Anyway, I stayed on; it would’ve felt a little silly dropping the title when after only three issues.  Since then, we’ve had quite a bit of soft material (the entire contest for the new North Wind was pretty much just for fun), and only now have we reached a point in Fables where you feel you have something to lose.

Fables #118 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Steve Leialoha & Andrew Peopy (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: And now we know why we make kids wait until they’re 18 before setting them free.

The Review: In one of my favorite episodes of 30 Rock, harassed writer Liz Lemon snaps at melodrama queen Jenna Maroney, “…you’re so insecure you get jealous at babies for their soft skin!”  “And for all the attention they get!” adds Jenna.  Setting aside the ludicrousness of the scene, Jenna alludes to a well-trodden observation about children: no matter the context, they instantly and always get all our focus.

And deservedly so; being more vulnerable to everything dangerous or malevolent, kids really do need our extra attention.  Maybe that’s why the moment you have a child in a threatening situation, the tension suddenly becomes a lot heavier than you’d even notice with adults.  In this arc, we have not just one, but two children at risk.  One endures grievous injury and the other goes through a psychological wringer while physically wasting away.

Fables #117 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Steve Leialoha & Andrew Pepoy (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: On the bright side, Therese, pretend cake is less fattening than actual cake.

The Review: I have to say, it’s a nice change of pace that Willingham has scaled back his multiple storyline format for a more focused, and thus more driven, plot.  In some issues the constant gear-shifts from one Fable’s story to another could get frustrating, especially when they had no connection to each other.  Besides, when you only have so many pages to tell three stories at once, you can’t help feeling each one gets shortchanged a little to make room for the others.

So it’s been a real luxury to spend so much time on just two central characters whose respective plotlines are bound to each other anyway.  Aside from a one-page excursion to the returning citizens to Fabletown (who play right into Spratt’s hands by moving onto her home turf), and your usual dose of Bufkin & Co. (whose tale of revolution grows less captivating every issue, despite Shawn McManus’ charming art), the issue keeps the spotlight on the boldest of Snow White and Bigby’s children.

Fables #116 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Steve Leialoha, Andrew Pepoy, Dan Green (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors), Shawn McManus (feature art)

The Story: If your own family can’t rescue you from the clutches of maniacal toys, who can?

The Review: When Ozma delivered her prophecy regarding the fate of the Cubs, it was natural to assume that however dire the foretelling, we could rest on the Cubs getting to grow up a bit before such anxious events come to pass.  Upon reflection, this is a very naïve belief.  When it comes to Fables, disaster tends to strike sooner rather than later, and the more unprepared the characters are, the better.

Although the prophecy’s temporal context is so loose that you can’t really trust that any particular event is actually fulfilling it, we might as well take a good stab at it.  Willingham wouldn’t give us the thing if he hadn’t meant for us to do some wild speculating.  Winter, by succeeding her grandfather as the North Wind, has become a king, so that’s one down.

Fables #115 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (writer), Mark Buckingham (penciller), Steve Leialoha (inker), Lee Loughridge (colorist), Shawn McManus (feature artist)

The Story: On the bright side, Therese, at least you’re not being made queen of Haiti.

The Review: Even though “happily ever after” doesn’t apply equally to all ye olde fairy tales, that’s generally the feeling such stories evoke.  The brilliance of Willingham’s Fables is for them, there is no “happily ever after.”  One day, perhaps, when we reach the end of this series, we’ll discover all the conflict and horror these characters have suffered through are just a heightened extension of what they must necessarily go through to earn their happy ending.

Till that day, most of the Fables have to take their joys in measured doses.  For Snow White, Bigby Wolf, and the Cubs, that means cherishing their family life, something hardly any other Fable has.  We begin with Snow looking lovingly on her kids, and singing—actually singing (“…best part of the day… / …when monsters, trolls and grumpkins are locked away.”).  Snow probably hasn’t engaged in such stereotypical fairy-tale princess behavior since the innocent days of her youth, so that should indicate the gladness coursing through her in that moment.

It all falls apart, of course, once Therese’s disappearance is finally noted (frankly surprising me no one notices sooner—didn’t anyone wonder at her absence during dinnertime?).  And where is she now?  Well might you ask, for the place she’s landed upon has many names, including Magical Land, Madland, Far Mattagonia, Discardia, but the one we’ll inevitably remember most is Toyland.  Unlike the realm you imagined in childhood, this Toyland seems quite sinister.  It’s only because broken toys which talk tend to have that effect, but it’s also because they play so perceptively on Therese’s desire to be queen of her own kingdom, like homelier sister Winter.

Fables #111 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (writer), Mark Buckingham (penciller) Steve Leialoha & Shawn McManus (inkers), Lee Loughridge (colorist)

The Story: Get ready to see who’ll be the new North Wind—he (or she) will blow you away!

The Review: Reading this series occasionally reminds me of something I often wondered when reading Harry Potter: for all the drama going on in the magical world, all the normals just went on their merry way, eating McDonalds and drinking Starbucks without ever becoming aware of the disaster on the verge of crossing over into their lives.  The same goes with the Fables; for all their perils, we really have no idea what tangible effect it’ll have upon the non-fictional world.

Take this choosing of a new North Wind.  The late Mr. North’s servant can talk all he wants about how “Entire worlds can live or die” depending on the choice of successor, but we don’t really know what he means by that.  “Worlds” as in other planets or fictional realms?  Why would the North Wind have such a critical effect on other worlds?  Without that information, it just seems he’s trying to play up the drama since the action is rather clearly lacking here.

At least we have assurance of real drama to come.  Spoiler alert—Winter, by reaching the Homeland of the North, reveals herself as its new “king.”  In some ways, we could have foreseen this; she bears the name of Boreas’ former wife, after all.  But as the most childlike and innocent of the Cubs, she seems totally unfit for the role.  Besides that, there’s the anxious question of how this will affect the family dynamic (aside from Darren’s obvious outrage losing kingship).

Winter’s age and personality also make her peril in her new status all the greater, as the other three cardinal winds don’t look all too enthused about the development either.  Though the East Wind seems conciliatory enough at the event, telling his fellow winds to “Mind the occasion,” don’t forget his earlier remark about the Cubs possibly killing themselves off during the testing: “[T]hat’s fewer we’ll have to winnow out when we’re compelled to step in.”  The West Wind seems determined to step in regardless, saying, “In the end we’ll still have to finish things.”

Fables #110 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (writer), Mark Buckingham (penciller), Steve Leialoha & Shawn McManus (inkers), Lee Loughridge (colorist)

The Story: If you’re an enemy of the state, prepare to be pooped by the Yoop.

The Review: Having multiple running plots can be a handy way to keep your story from stalling in one place too long, but it has its downsides too.  Split them up too much and you have the reader not only regrouping to keep track of them all, but you also risk shortchanging each plotline to the point they only inch forward with each episode.  Even worse is when they all hit that big, fat middle of exposition, which can be deadly in the best circumstances.

That is pretty much the situation Willingham brings upon himself here.  He essentially has four stories going on at once, each pretty much its own thing and not obviously related to the others.  The real problem is they all tend to hit the rises and falls of their action at the same time.  When they reach major turning points, the whole thing sings; when they reach the talky portions of the story, suddenly the whole issue becomes an endless cascade of text.

Fables #109 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (writer), Mark Buckingham (penciller), Steve Leialoha (inker), Lee Loughridge (colorist)

The Story: Heavy is the crown the king must wear on his noggin—or whatever.

The Review: The last couple arcs spent a lot of time building up the tension for when Mr. Dark would rain down his nightmarish power over all the Fables and destroy them all, or at least most of them.  Since all that anxious anticipation pretty much came to nothing, both for them and for us, it now just seems like the title has been spinning its wheels for a while.  While all their current antics offer the usual good times, you also wonder where the next baddie will come from.

As much as Willingham wants to direct our attention to Nurse Spratt—I mean, Leigh Duglas—the idea of her as the Fables’ newest nemesis seems a major step down from the embodiment of bogey-men everywhere.  It’s obvious she’s determined to improve herself in the art of dastardly dealings (familiarizing herself with poisons and the like), and she briefly mentions that “others” will soon join her in an ostensibly spooky way, but it all seems very mundane and unthreatening.

Also somewhat disappointingly, Rose Red and her scouting team find nothing out of sorts on the Farm.  You’d think they’d run into at least one obligatory mystical trap worthy of a panther, crow, tomcat, and redhead armed with a dagger, but no.  In short, things seem to be going swell for all our Fables at home—meaning some horrible disaster must lurk right around the corner, just out of sight, but that doesn’t really do anything for our suspense in the herenow.

Most of the action comes courtesy of Bufkin et al, still getting up to no good in land formerly known as Oz.  We know they plan to start a revolution and to do it they need to sneak out some of the goodies from a bunker full of the most powerful magical weaponry in the Homelands, but everything in between remains a mystery.  The odds certainly are stacked against them, as before they even take their first step, they run into “the Yoop!  And ravening monkey-eating kalidahs!”

Fables #108 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (writer), Mark Buckingham (penciller), Steve Leialoha (inker), Lee Loughridge (colorist)

The Story: Oh, they just can’t wait to be king!

The Review: If you have a series that reaches a hundred issues, and haven’t accumulated a whole slew of engaging, enjoyable characters by then, you’ve done something wrong.  Not so for Willingham, whose epic title has a cast to beat the band.  With such a huge stable to choose from, yielding an endless combination of backgrounds and personalities, it’s quite possible that Fables will never run out of stories to tell.

Of course, the emotional center of all these characters is Bigby Wolf and Snow White, who, after a close save from the armies of Mr. Dark in the previous story arc, now have to face something of a family crisis.  The loss of Bigby’s dad left a major vacancy in the hierarchy of winds, and unless someone fills it soon, things are liable to get ugly, fast.  And so the servants of the late North Wind turn to the Cubs, young and unspoiled enough to take the position with honor.

Thankfully, Willingham doesn’t give too much focus to this question of succession, allowing the family some time to express their mix of emotions at the North Wind’s passing.  Among the Cubs, Darien is unsurprisingly more fixated on the idea of becoming king, much to the chagrin of his siblings, while Ambrose mournfully reminisces on all the good times they had with their “Grampaw.”  Sweetly sincere, these scenes offer an important glimpse into Mr. North’s soft side.

Fables #91 – Review

by Bill Willingham (writer), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Steve Leialoha & Daniel Green (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors), and Todd Klein (letters)

The Story: Geppetto makes a bid for power while Bufkin wages his final battle with Baba Yaga.

What’s Good: This was just an absolutely fantastic issue that shows that all those readers who claim that the series lost its heart after “War & Pieces” simply have no idea what they’re talking about.  This was engaging, intelligent, humorous, action-packed, fun, and generally everything you expect out of a quality comic.

Seeing Geppetto back in action and the closest we’ve ever seen him to his old posture was great.  The guy’s got charisma that leaps off of the page.  Willingham’s play on history was also quite good: Geppetto sounded like more or less every dictator in modern history to make a bid for power.  His call for unity, his protests against the inefficacy and corruption of the current regime, and his promises of security all felt very real.  It’s weird to see a comic so rooted in fancy give such an honest and close approximation to actual political history.

Geppetto’s rise also causes Ozma to step-up in a big way, and finally, Willingham has sold me on the character.  I’ve been on the fence about her, but this month, Willingham finally gives her the necessary appeal.

Then there’s Bufkin.  From his innocent bumbling, to his quoting of obscure passages, the character is simply adorable.  If you dislike Bufkin, you have no soul.  The fact that his one, and only, hand to hand combat technique is basically derived from his own penchant for clumsiness and pratfalls was simply golden, as was the unfolding of his manifold trap, which basically felt like a kid’s board game gone horribly wrong.

Fables #90 – Review

by Bill Willingham (writer), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Steve Leialoha & Andrew Pepoy (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors), and Todd Klein (letters

The Story: Bufkin continues to wage his guerrilla war against Baba Yaga while back home, Ozma makes her move.

What’s Good: As has been the case with this entire arc, Bufkin’s portions are undoubtedly the strongest and most enjoyable of this issue.  The little guy versus big guy dynamic that has fuelled much of Fables’ appeal since its inception continues to be an infectious one.  What we get this month borders on slapstick, with Bufkin springing or working on a couple of traps.  This gives his scenes a really fun, “Home Alone” feel, as the unwitting Baba Yaga falls prey to Bufkin’s cunning.  Indeed, the spirit of last month’s awesome last scene is sustained and amplified as the flying monkey becomes an increasingly legitimate force while the innocence that has made him a fan favourite far is still maintained.

Bufkin is not the only source of comedy however, as King Cole also shows his lovable side.  His happy avarice and general love is all good fun and a self-aware bright spot in a storyline and status quo that has at times been pretty damned dark.  It’s nice to see something go right for the Fables for once.

Speaking of dark, it’s great to see that not only has Willingham not forgotten about Gepetto, but that the writer also seemingly has big plans in store for the character.  Though it’s only a page, this may be the most intriguing moment of the book.   It’s testament to Willingham’s abilities that a character who’s been all but forgotten for so many issues can still carry such magnetism and importance when he does show up.

Finally, while it was inevitable, the ending of this month’s issue is all kinds of awesome, featuring a familiar addition to the cast who is a certifiable badass.

Meanwhile, Mark Buckingham once again brings the artwork you’ve come to expect of him, both distinct and detailed.  Outside of one admittedly off headshot of Bigby, Buckingham remains incredibly consistent.  His Baba Yaga remains awesome as ever.

What’s Not So Good: The scenes involving Ozma’s attempts to wrest control of the 13^th floor felt overly long and somewhat overwritten.  It simply felt as though there were too many words spent on reaching a fairly basic and logical endpoint, with none of it feeling particularly interesting or shocking.  It’s a shame, as the rest of the book is really quite a lot of fun save for this extended dry spot.  While it’s good to see the other magicians get a few lines for once, it doesn’t change the fact that things were a bit drawn out.

Conclusion: A really solid issue of Fables that does little wrong, as it sticks to the formula that’s made the series a success.

Grade: B+

-Alex Evans

Fables #89 – Review

by Bill Willingham (writer), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Steve Leialoha and Andrew Pepoy (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors), and Todd Klein (letters)

The Story: Bufkin the monkey starts on the path to becoming a hero.  Meanwhile, Totenkinder follows Mister Dark’s trail.

What’s Good: This is quite possibly the best issue of Fables that 2009 has seen thus far.  Regular readers of WCBR know that I’ve often been critical of Bill Willingham’s recent work, especially as it relates to the Great Fables Crossover.  The reason why I loved this issue so much is that it’s simply a case of Willingham going back to basics and returning Fables to its roots, as, well, a fable.

Fables has always been such a lovable series due to its narrative often focusing on the little guy taking on the big guy, becoming a hero, and realizing he’s not really so little after all.  Willingham has done it successfully with Boy Blue, Flycatcher, and perhaps the entire Fables community itself in its war with the Empire.  Now, in this issue, Willingham begins grinding the old gears once more, carving out perhaps his most unlikely hero yet in Bufkin the monkey.

It shows what a master Willingham is that even the most tertiary characters of the Fables world (Bufkin,  the head of Frankenstein’s creature, the mirror) are so fully developed.  On paper, the idea of Bufkin the monkey leading the entire Fables comic sounds ludicrous, and yet it works.  Bufkin is so engaging due to his being a bizarre mixture of innocence and seeming stupidity with cunning and intelligence.  He’s always been naturally likable and humourous, and so Willingham has crafted his greatest underdog yet.

Of course, the last page of the comic cannot go unmentioned.  Pitting a lovable underdog against massive opposition is one thing, but such power is evoked when little hints are made about that underdog’s true potential.  I challenge any Fables reader not to get goosebumps over the last line of this book, relating to Bufkin’s true power, which incidentally touches upon Willingham’s own belief in the power of reading and literature.

Though nothing hugely remarkable happened, I have to add that Totenkinder, now in her true form, has an indescribable magnetism and mystique about her.  Even with little going on, she eats up the pages she appears on.

Lastly, Buckingham is up to his usual standard here on art.  Having Baba Yaga and the giant blue Djinn running about truly allows Buckingham to let loose, resulting in some awesome images that only Buckingham, and Fables, can deliver.

What’s Not So Good: Very little, really.  I suppose the short scene with Mister Dark, Bigby, and Beast wasn’t particularly necessary.  All it does is remind us that Mister Dark is evil and powerful while providing an opportunity for Beast to shill the new Peter & Max novel.

Also, though it did allow him to display his cunning as well as the advantages inherent in his unassuming form, Bufkin’s confrontation with the djinn was really very abrupt.  I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t enjoyable, but the overall ease and brevity were a little disappointing.

Conclusion: This is Fables doing what it does best and doing what it’s supposed to do, and that’s a very, very good thing.

Grade: A –

-Alex Evans