Fables #132 – Review

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

The Story: Joining the Round Table is a bit like trying out for Glee Club, except less singing.

The Review: I took an Arthurian legend class once, and the one thing I took away from it was how grim most of the stories ended up.  In every version of the Arthurian tales,* Camelot, which stands as a shining city of ideals against the Dark Ages, ultimately falls to mankind’s baser instincts.  The chivalric code and the Round Table are undermined by the fatal flaws of the knights, the court, and Arthur himself.  Virtue crumples in the face of human weakness.

So how shall we take Rose’s big idea to bring back the Round Table and to establish “a new order of knighthood, here at the Farm, dedicated to the ancient ideals of chivalry”?  Given how well that turned out last time, can we possible expect Rose to succeed where King Arthur failed?  Erratic at the best of times, it’s clear she’s working out this plan on the fly, though hopefully inspired by, well, hope.  If Rose has one advantage over the legendary king, it’s a sense of realistic expectations.  Her first table looks more like a setting for an AA meeting than a future Camelot, but, as she points out, “This is a start.”