Fables #136 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Mark Buckingham (layouts), Russ Braun (finishes), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: Rose begins to regret all those times she ever dozed off during history lessons.

The Review: A few months ago, back when Rose started this new Camelot business, I questioned the wisdom of modeling her enterprise after a fable that so clearly went wrong in the end.  And considering the nature of these characters, you could guess that they’d be more susceptible to foreordained endings than most.  But that’s the nature of Rose’s virtue, isn’t it?  Always hoping that things might turn out differently this time around?

Not to disparage hope, but it’s clearly going to take a lot more than positive thinking to get over the doom of Camelot.  Rose would be wise to take to heart the wisdom and knowledge of no less than the original Lady of the Lake herself.  Although Lake states that fate itself—or should I say, the Fates themselves—poses the biggest danger to Rose’s plans, such forces require instruments to come to pass.  A lot of our interest in this storyline, therefore, is speculating who will take on the roles Guinevere, Lancelot, Morgan le Fey, and Mordred played in the first Camelot’s fall.

Fables #128 – Review

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

The Story: It’s sad a woman can’t even depend on her husband to slay her ex-lover anymore.

The Review: What makes a good throwdown?  Two opponents of equal measure, because a one-sided fight just bores everyone.  Some real stakes in the fight, attached to something internal for the characters: pride, honor, vengeance, justice, etc.  Most of all, you want unpredictability.  You want to be shocked and surprised by a turn of events.  You want the things you least expect to happen to actually happen.  If you have all that, it hardly matters who wins or loses.

That doesn’t stop you rooting for one person or another, however.  In the matchup between Bigby and Brandish, I’m sure most of us would place our bets on our favorite big, bad wolf—or at least, we’d like to bet against the fastidious prince.  But I think going into this fight, we know that on a narrative level, the odds are against Bigby.  With an arc centered on Snow, it wouldn’t be right for her husband to swoop in and end the matter, rendering her no more than your typical damsel in distress.  Willingham would never let that happen.