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.

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.

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.

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.