Fairest #16 – Review

By: Sean E. Williams (story), Stephen Sadowski (pencils), Phil Jimenez & Dan Green (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: Prince Charming realizes this is no Bollywood romance he’s stumbled into.

The Review: Not that every story has to be layered with double meanings and secret symbols, but for a reviewer, the more straightforward a story, the less he naturally has to talk about.  After all, why would you need a critic when a synopsis of the plot would suffice just as much?  Fables, for example, wouldn’t have such lasting power if they weren’t crafted in such a way as to deliver a bigger message beneath the simplicity of their actual substance.

This is all to say that I find it very interesting that Williams’ reinterpretation of Nalayani’s character and journey is in many ways less complex and meaningful than the original.  Admittedly, sequels and spin-offs do tend to end up like this, but Fables isn’t usually your typical sequel or spin-off.  It’s possible that Williams will at a later point reveal how deeply layered his story really is—he’d have to if he wants to make any impact with this arc at all—but for now, his individual issues aren’t particularly engaging.

Fables #129 – Review

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

The Story: With that, Snow officially has the worst love life of all the Fables.

The Review: I find it quite interesting that for this arc, Willingham has chosen Ambrose to narrate the last few issues.  I don’t know if this will be a permanent thing, seeing how his destined role is to judge the past through his journalistic histories, but I do wonder why now, for this particular story?  In some ways, his hindsight vision ends up stealing some of the suspense from the plot, as he hints at the chain of events to come.

Perhaps allowing Ambrose to serve as narrator is an act of compassion on Willingham’s part for a character doomed to be sidelined.  In Ozma’s prophecy, all the Cubs are fated to do great things (and some already have), all but one, who is merely to judge the actions of the rest.  He promise of survival is his doom; he exists to observe, rather than participate, in Fables’ great events.  “My life in a nutshell,” he muses, with no small hint of ruefulness, “insignificant bits and pieces of other stories.”

Fairest #14 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Barry Kitson (art), Inaki Miranda (finishes), Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: A crappy meal can get in the way of any date.

The Review: Love is the trickiest of all things to manage and the most difficult to obtain, particularly when it’s true.  Considering how many fables are dedicated to illustrating those points, it should perhaps be no surprise that so many of our Fables have been, to say the least, unlucky in love.  In that regard, the fairest of the Fables endure a special kind of suffering: for all their beauty and other virtues, they live rather lonely, loveless lives, which are the worst kind.

So it goes with Princess Alder, the dryad, who sees the most depressing problem in her life as her “deplorable dating life.”  Honestly, this would be an exhausting premise for a story had this involved any other kind of woman—namely human woman.  Fiction nowadays is inundated with stories about women running the gauntlet of the dating game.  But put a half-tree, forest creature in the same high-heeled shoes and suddenly you have a story that’s funny and kind of brilliant.

Fables #127 – Review

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

The Story: Just as one marriage is in the works, another begins to show the signs of strain.

The Review: With a run spanning over ten years, Fables has had a lot of time to develop its community dynamic.  The bonds among the various characters have changed since they first began (some multiple times), but by and large, they’ve all grown more intimate and affectionate.  They’ve weathered several wars and quite a few lean years together; that kind of communal suffering breeds familiarity and smooth tensions that make for enduring relationships.

So it’s rather nice to see that with Snow White essentially taken hostage by Prince Brandish (and I’ve decided, for the sake of convenience, to use his true name from now on), all of Fabletown rallies to support her.  Unfortunately, they encounter some unexpectedly strong resistance from Brandish himself, who confounds them on both a legal and magical level.  Far from the demurring fencer he started out as, this Brandish is incredibly cunning—and cruel.

Fairest #13 – Review

By: Lauren Beukes (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva De La Cruz (colors)

The Story: It’s a war between freaks on the streets of Tokyo—someone grab the popcorn.

The Review: Every great journey starts out looking for one thing, only to find another.  A young man leaves his desert homeworld in search of adventure and winds up saving the galaxy.  A hobbit sets off to see the elves and along the way brings down a dark lord.  A boy with glasses goes to magic school to find companionship and strikes down the most evil wizard of his time.  Ultimately, however, they all find what they’re looking for in the end.

For Rapunzel, this arc has just been yet another chapter in her quest to find her children.  If you opened this issue expecting to see twin girls waiting for their mother on the last page, you’ll be mightily disappointed, to say the least.  But although Rapunzel fails once again to retrieve her children—her human children, at any rate—the fact that she can finally return to her ex-lover with the bounty she promised makes for a mostly complete resolution of Beukes’ story.

Fables #126 – Review

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

The Story: On the bright side, Snow has a husband willing to wait centuries to get to third base.

The Review: Although soap operas rightfully deserve all the jokes about their various and sundry clichés now, there’s a reason why they continue to have a place in our world, whether you’re talking about our American offerings, your Mexican telenovelas, or Asian dramas.  It’s all about their total fearlessness (or utter lack of taste—call it what you will) when it comes to throwing in plot twists that can upend the entire storyline up to that point.

Such was the case with the last-page revelation we got last issue.  Discovering heretofore unknown spouses is basically the bread and butter of your average soap, no?  Here, however, the nature of Snow’s “marriage” to Holt (or Brandish) is a little more questionable than we were initially led to believe, though Holt takes a rather stunted view of things: “[A] ceremony is meaningless in the high law of our land.  The promise is all that matters.”

Fables #125 – Review

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

The Story: Lord help the pedestrian in the way when Bigby learns to drive stick-shift.

The Review: Being a latecomer to the Fables mythos, I probably don’t have as profound an appreciation for its characters and continuity as I should.  It’s hard to get the real flavor of anything from Wiki summaries alone.  Bu that doesn’t make me any less interested in an arc focused on Snow White.  Given Bigby’s more active personality, Snow can get a little sidelined, so it’s good to shift the focus on the only real contender for Fables’ female lead.

At first, you might be misled into thinking that Bigby’s search for their children will take center stage in this arc.  That kind of quest does seem like the more exciting kind of stuff, after all, and once you add Stinky the Badger for a road trip buddy and the promise of Bigby learning to drive a car (a “terrible day,” Ambrose recalls in his future writings), well—that’s about all you can ask for, right?  Besides, we know from #121 that Bigby’s quest will prove fruitless, so actually finding his kids won’t be the outcome of his story.

Fairest #11 – Review

By: Lauren Beukes (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva De La Cruz (colors)

The Story: What’s up, boy?  Who fell down the well?

The Review: When I wrote the first draft of this review, I originally praised DC for maintaining its interest in Vertigo, because honestly, there’s where most of the really original (if not always outstanding) titles are.  Then I found out from their April solicitations that Saucer Country, a title I only recently declared as one of my favorites, was getting canned.  Once again, I prove to have a gift for clinging to things that are destined to leave me.*

Anyway, before my enthusiasm got mercilessly shot down, I also made a point of commending DC for using Vertigo as a convenient way of cultivating talent to potentially leverage them for their mainstream books later.  What brought about this now-premature approval was this mostly amazing issue of Fairest, which makes me feel the smartest choice would be to let Beukes pitch an ongoing Vertigo title of her choice before priming her as a natural successor to Justice League Dark or Sword of Sorcery.

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.

Fairest #10 – Review

By: Lauren Beukes (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: Meet the only girl who can have multiple bad hair days in a 24-hour period.

The Review: Now that I think about it, women do make up a substantial part of the Fables population, don’t they?  You can’t deny the popularity of the fairy tale ladies far outstrips that of the guys, which explains not only their prominence in this universe, but also the fact that they can have long, involved storylines that do not center on romantic entanglements—at least, in theory.  Up until this arc, Fairest has tended to focus on the heroines’ love lives.

That’s all changed with Rapunzel’s search for her children.  In addition to the rather scandalous lifestyle choices she’s made over the years, Rapunzel simply seems more raw and primal than her fellow fair ladies.  You certainly can’t see Snow, Briar, Rose, or Cindy, even at their most desperate hour, spinning a nest of their own hair, strung and webbed across the boughs of a forest.  Combined with her urgent, instinctual hunt for her children, Punzel has an animalistic quality that makes her relationship with a kitsune almost logical.

Fables #123 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Gene Ha (art), Art Lyon (colors)

The Story: The first and last time a lord of monsters took advice from a dainty turtle.

The Review: As I’ve mentioned, I try not to let my fictional preferences show around these parts, but I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m something of a fantasy nut.  Maybe not so much in the dragons ‘n’ sorcerers sort of way, but I do love tales of the hidden and unknown, the idea that there’s a whole world in our world that we don’t know about, that sometimes superstitions and stories are hinting vaguely at something much bigger and real.

So between the Japanese folklore in Fairest and the intersection of myth and fairy tales here, you can safely conclude that the Fables series have been rocking my boat this month.  These kinds of stories really get at the heart of why we started telling stories in the first place: to pin down the unknowable, to try to make sense of a world where good people die young and crooks get away scot-free and folks who take more than one sample at Costco don’t get severely beaten.

Fairest #9 – Review

By: Lauren Beukes (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: When will people ever learn that you can’t always trust a foxy lady?

The Review: Any time you spin off a title, you’re going to have to run into questions of whether there’s actually demand for the sibling series (and material to meet it), or whether you’re simply being exploitive.  Let’s be honest with ourselves; most spin-offs fall clearly and pathetically into the latter category.  For most of Fairest’s run, the jury was still out on where the series stands.  It’s not as if there’d been a huge outcry for more stories featuring Fables’ most beautiful stars.

Between her rock-solid first issue and the one on review today, Beukes has made a strong case that Fairest has a whole wealth of stories we’d be interested to hear, but which Fables doesn’t have the time to service.  Flashing back to the early days of Fabletown reminds us that while Snow White and Bigby were out determining the fate of fairy tale characters everywhere, every Fable had a life to live, and there’s no reason to believe theirs were any less intriguing or eventful than their deputy mayor and sheriff.

Fables #122 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Gene Ha (art), Art Lyon (colors)

The Story: The only thing that can make a giant wolf lose his appetite is his own ennui.

The Review: I’d never have predicted that of all the many comic book titles I’ve ever reviewed, Fables would end up being the one I covered the longest.  Granted, the DC relaunch messed with the numbers a little bit, but facts are facts.  At eighteen issues, it still rests solidly on my pull list and I imagine it will remain so for a long time to come.  The world Willingham’s chosen to explore has few real limits and enduring appeal; it’s as eternal as it makes itself out to be.

And when you have different parts of folklore meet, especially with the spin that Willingham puts on them, the possibilities are endless.  Some meetings, however, have more inherent story potential than others.  I’d say a chance encounter between the Big Bad Wolf in his primal glory and a woman “from the deep realms” with the power to assign fates falls into that category.  Is it even possible to write something unoriginal, given such a premise?

Fairest #8 – Review

By: Lauren Beukes (story), Inaki Miranda (art), Eva de la Cruz (colors)

The Story: And here you thought the most dangerous thing about origami was the paper cuts.

The Review: I consider myself a cautious optimist by nature and practice.  I don’t blind myself to risks, but I tend to bet on the best possible outcome.  With showcase titles, I always look on the next feature with the hope that it’ll be better than the last.  Fairest has so far produced only one complete arc, a harmless but not outstanding affair whose art far surpassed the story.  The standalone that came after, well—I still waver between calling it bad or just mediocre.

But when every new storyline comes attached with a whole new creative team, there’s always a chance a pleasant surprise lies in wait.  Beukes gets your attention right away by setting a trend of defeating expectations.  At first, Rapunzel’s morose opening monologue leads you to believe you’re in for a sizable set-up to a simmering drama, but then the windows burst, showering her and her loyal haircutter Joel with a thousand origami cranes and shards of glass, and you know you’re in for a different kind of treat.

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.”

Fairest #7 – Review

By: Matthew Sturges (story), Shawn McManus (art)

The Story: Your wife’s a hottie, but she’s also a real snake in the grass.

The Review: Now that fiction has become a largely manufactured business, storytelling devices have turned into commonplace—dare I say, cheap—products.  Along with cliffhangers, dramatic irony, and in medias res, the most overused and increasingly impotent fictional tactic is nothing other than the “twist.”  The bulk of these things turn out silly and artificial; a handful prove to be actually surprising; and then you have ones that teeter right on the edge of excellent and lame.

We have one such twist in this issue.  It’s a doozie, no doubt about it, but size really doesn’t make a difference with these things.  There’s no use beating around the bush, so—spoiler alert—the revelation that Beauty (as in “and the Beast”) is not actually one of the fairest maidens of the land, but rather a shapeshifting snake-woman in disguise hits that sweet spot between amazing in a good way and amazing in a bad way.

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.

Fairest #6 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Phil Jimenez (pencils), Andy Lanning & Andrew Pepoy (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: It doesn’t take a genius to realize this Briar Rose can make you bleed.

The Review: A lot of what Fables is about has been taking the childish notions of the original fairy tales and holding them up to the light of current understanding.  We remain endlessly fascinated by these characters because they have all the means and knowledge to operate by modern standards, yet they’re still restricted, even frustrated, by their own essential natures, which were often crafted from superstition, ignorance, and wishful thinking.

Is it any wonder then that Briar Rose finds herself constantly disappointed by her failure to find true love, despite supposedly blessed with a magical guarantee of it?  Of course, she discovers along with her fairy godmothers that the definition of love, even true love, is a whole lot broader than any of them could have expected.  Panghammer’s ridiculous metaphors (“Waking you with true love’s kiss just means someone got the cake recipe right and successfully baked a very lovely, incredibly tasty cake.”) aside, Briar learns the kind of love she wants has to be earned.

Fables #119 – Review

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

The Story: The therapist who works with these kids stands to make a fortune.

The Review: I mentioned a bit about my summer internship in my review of DC Universe #11, and as it happens, that experience has some relevance here as well.  Another thing I’ve learned is there is no age floor for when someone begins to internalize the pain around them.  Kids pick up all the worst things in their life long before they even learn to express it in words, and the damage is frequently irreparable; it never totally goes away, even if they manage to recover.

And the stuff Therese and Darien have to go through is quite a bit more serious than the usual set of childhood trauma.  If they ever manage to get back to their home and family, they will never forget this harrowing experience in Madland.  How can you expect them to when they’ve had their innocence crushed by choices that would defeat most grown-ups?

Fairest #5 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Phil Jimenez & Steve Sadowski (pencils), Andy Lanning & Andrew Pepoy (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: Ladies, you are two bikinis and some mud away from a showdown of a lifetime.

The Review: We’re all still nerds here, right?  Does anyone know Mugen, that thing on YouTube where people would pit characters from various games and shows and see who would come out on top?  There’s nothing scientific to these things; it’s just a bunch of geeks playing out the most random speculations (“Wolverine versus Paine, Berserker Dressphere, from Final Fantasy X-II—who would win?”) to absolutely no point whatsoever.  Pure nerdery for its own sake.

If you get a big kick out of this issue, certainly far more than you did from any issue prior, it most likely has everything to do with seeing the Snow Queen face off against the great faerie Hadeon.  It definitely has that flavor of fantasy fulfillment—something which Fables does a lot, come to think of it.  It is never not enjoyable/hilarious watching two figures from fairy tale classics get all Rambo on each other.

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.

Fairest #4 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Phil Jimenez & Steve Sadowski (pencils), Andy Lanning & Andrew Pepoy (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: A fairy tale who loves fairy tales.  A bit incestuous if you ask me.

The Review: Since Willingham is at bottom a talented writer with a lot of vision, I’m willing to believe he intended all along for Lumi the Snow Queen to assert herself as the central figure of this story.  But to me it feels more like one of those slow evolutions in the story itself, where Willingham found something that was really working—because honestly, much of this series so far has not—and let it grow.

This issue’s opening scene highlights just how diminished Ali Baba and Briar Rose’s presences have become, with Ali acting more like a featured distraction and Rose physically absent altogether.  Ali’s not even much interesting as a distraction either; most of his dialogue involves a lot of decidedly un-princelike whining, which does nothing for his already minimal personality.  Otherwise, you might be more interested that between the two women he kissed in the debut, it may not be Rose he’s meant to end up with (according to Jonah’s thus far reliable prognosis).

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.

Fairest #3 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Phil Jiminez (pencils), Andy Lanning & Mark Farmer (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: You’re never too old—or tyrannical—for a good story.

The Review: Three months into this series’ run, it’s still not clear what role it’s meant to serve in the grand scheme of the Fables universe.  Though ostensibly a showcase for the most attractive individuals fairy tales have to offer, this doesn’t seem quite enough to support an entire ongoing.  As a supplement to Fables proper, it hasn’t quite established how closely it intends to tie in with the events of its sister title.  In short, you really don’t know what to make of this book.

The first couple issues definitely gave you no help in figuring any of this out.  The plot has largely meandered, switching suddenly from Ali Baba’s hustling adventures to a random retelling of Sleeping Beauty.  We haven’t really gotten to know any of our protagonists to like them very much—assuming they’re likable in the first place (I’m looking at you, Panghammer).  And although the return of the Snow Queen, one of the major Fables villains, suggests bigger stakes than what we’ve seen, we’ve gotten little sense of danger or tension.

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.