Cinderella: Fables Are Forever #5 – Review

By: Chris Roberson (writer), Shawn McManus (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist)

The Story: Watch what you’re doing with that glass cat!  You break it, you bought it!

The Review: Does anything beat a good rivalry?  It’s a rhetorical question, because of course nothing does.  I’m quite a fan of the sitcom nemesis, the one who pops up every now and again to drop some mocking taunt just when the protagonist is at his lowest, but my next favorite is the ongoing, escalating face-offs between two enemies.  Done right, the stakes just get higher and the history between them even richer with each encounter.

And for an archenemy so recently introduced as Dorothy, it’s surprising how gung-ho you already feel for the big girl-fight with Cinderella to go down.  We can see from their first showdown in the past that even with Ivan’s help, Dorothy gets pretty much schooled by Cindy, who manages to take back the kidnapped Snow White and sucker-punch her freckled counterpart at the same time.  This incident will no doubt keep both women aiming for victory in their next match-up; Dorothy to avenge her defeat, Cindy to prove the last time was no accident.

The issue also calls attention to Cindy’s role as a career killer, a funny thing since the whole premise of the series revolves around that very fact.  But even in action she tends to be so darn cool and cute that you’re often inclined to overlook the grim implications of her day job.  Still, when Dorothy claims they both serve the same function, it speaks volumes that Cindy has no hesitation in denying it and making a clever distinction: one’s a mercenary, the other “a patriot”.

Cinderella: Fables Are Forever #4 – Review

By: Chris Roberson (writer), Shawn McManus (artist), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: This time, Cinderella’s taking the catfight straight to Dorothy’s face.

The Review: Fables has sprung off a lot of quality spin-offs since its conception, but none have quite the pure, unadulterated fun of the mash-up between Cinderella and James Bond.  Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love had such a strong execution of the idea that it was a pity it existed only as a limited series.  How great it is then to get another glimpse into the covert operations of Cindy—and with an even more apt title.

By now, every Fables writer has gotten to be an expert at taking our friendly, familiar fairy tales and turning them on their heads.  Roberson’s portrayal of Dorothy Gale as a professional hit woman works not only because of its twistedness, but also because of how much sense it makes when you consider the implications of her background.  After all, she was pretty much hired to assassinate the Wicked Witch; that she grew to love it shouldn’t be too implausible.

Cindy’s longstanding rivalry of sorts with Dorothy also gives us a welcome look into the former soot-covered girl’s history beyond her sordid affair with Prince Charming.  Whether she’s acting the bimbo in Fabletown or showing her real steel, Cindy’s kind of an oddball among the Fables. so it’s nice to see that in her world of allegorical espionage, she has a few counterparts—though lacking her fair appearance and disposition.