Fairest #20 – Review

By: Sean E. Williams (story), Stephen Sadowski & Meghan Hetrick (pencils), Phil Jimenez & José Marzán (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: Prince Charming is relieved to know he can still keep an eye on his love life.

The Review: Reading through this arc has made me realize that Bill Willingham must have a lot of courage to trust others with his toys.  It’s one thing for mainstream writers to loan out their storyline ideas or to pass on their continuity to the writers who come after them; those characters don’t belong to them anyway.  But an indie writer owns not only the premise and characters of his story, but the story’s entire vision; can he really trust others to see the world the way he does?

In hindsight, Willingham probably shouldn’t have entrusted one of his bigger characters to Williams, who has unfortunately proven to lack the skill necessary to meld a personality like Prince Charming with an entirely new mythos in the Fables universe.  It’s possible that Williams was hindered by a mission to revive Charming and figure out a way to return him to Fabletown, but this by itself can’t possibly be the reason why this entire arc has felt so lifeless.