Fables #113 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Sit down, kids, and prepare to grow old, as I tell you about the olden days.

The Review: Bill Willingham likes to throw out these semi-out-of-continuity issues from time to time, which is all well and good.  He largely does a good job with them, and an excursion from the general flow of story can be a relief every now and then.  That said, I’m not so sure it’s entirely wise to throw in essentially a bunch of filler right after a Christmas issue that was itself a bit skimpy on the plot.  Hasn’t it been quite a while since we checked in with Bufkin?

But let’s set that aside.  Like I said, Willingham does write these sorts of things very well.  What we get is a handful of short stories, each of varying length and degrees of importance to overall Fables continuity, and with a different guest artist on each one.  Each tale has a great deal of charm, and there’s something to be said for stories that don’t require a lot of familiarity with continuity to enjoy them.

Even at his most free-flowing, Willingham’s knack for making connections between stories still pops up in the most surprising places.  He starts off with one of your classic “magic spell as a lesson” parables, though the substance is a little more sophisticated than your usual fairy tales.  It’s standard practice for people to go through some kind of physical transformation in these things to catalyze their spiritual transformation, but rarely is their soul—or entire race—at stake.  P. Craig Russell draws the feature with a fitting cutesiness, which Lovern Kindzierski’s pastels complement well.  Just as appropriate is Ramon Bachs’ cheerful, cartoonier linework (and Ron Randall’s vividly golden colors) as a father and son discuss the strange physics/superstition of their world, one which has a delightful link to the tale above.