Since I finished reading Neil Gaiman’s Sandman a few years ago, I’ve been trying to find another series to
start, one that has a lot of reading to catch up on. I started Fables today and think that I’ve finally
found that.
Fables: Legends in
Exile introduces Fabletown, a community of fairy tale people and creatures
that live among New Yorkers. After being run out of their homelands by the Adversary,
who may have been “a mere woodland sprite, while others claim he was once a god
– thrown down from the vast heavens when his corruptions had become too great
for his lofty brethren to tolerate,” they came to the New World and made a home
in New York (and a prose story penned by Bill Willingham called “A Wolf in the
Fold” at the end shows how they made the transition). There’s a vein of The Lord of the Rings and Sauron in the
depiction of the Adversary, and a throwback (I think!) to C.S. Lewis and Narnia
in the history of their immigration to New York (which also is a lot like
Gaiman’s American Gods, which is all
about immigration and the stories we bring with us from one country to another).
Legends in Exile
opens up in present day New York, when the murder of Rose Red is all anyone can
talk about. Her apartment has been found trashed and bloodstained, and it’s up
to detective Bigby Wolf to figure out what happened. Rose Red is the sister of
Snow White – Snow White acts as deputy to the Mayor, but really it’s her who
pulls the strings in Fabletown. She teams up with Bigby to track the murderer
down, confronting suspects like Rose Red’s boyfriend Jack (of the beanstalk)
and ex-fiancé Bluebeard (from the stories that show him as a demon/man who
murders his wives on their wedding night), under pressure from the Mayor to
solve the murder before the annual Day of Remembrance.
Fairy tales exist to be re-written and revised, and are sort
of entering into a ton of new variations recently. Once Upon a Time and Grimm are
hour-long TV shows that were picked up for full seasons in 2011-2012, and two
adaptations of Snow White are out
this year. But there is something about the comics genre that retains the seditious
edge to fairy tales, the undercurrent of “something is not right” that runs
through the traditional stories, especially those collected by the Brothers Grimm.
The gritty New York scene twists this revision even further in the direction of
its roots, and the mystery/detective theme of this first volume highlights the
violence implicit in those original stories.
Also, the cover art for Fables
is sort of incredible, which is why there have been published collections
of the covers for sale in addition to the story itself. James Jean did most of
the cover work for Fables, and
waiting for a new one is almost like waiting for a new Dave McKean cover for Sandman, where they seem to say as much
about the story as the writing/illustrations in the issues do. I didn’t really
start reading comics/graphic novels until university, when I needed a big-time
break from straight prose, and now I sort of lean towards them more than
traditional books. Not always, but if I’m looking for a really good story with excellent
writing and images and illustration that do more than support, but write a
story of their own, I head to that section of the bookstore. Fables is up to 121 issues, and it’s
something new to dive into during the summer. I’m going to try to keep track of
them on here – or at least as far as I can get in the next few months.
I’m hoping to have a few exciting reading projects up this summer,
so…stay tuned!
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