I promise I’m going to take a break on the Fables reviews after this one and head
back into some really great YA lit. But, until then, one more!
While Legends in Exile
and Animal Farm focused on more
self-contained stories, that had a concrete beginning, middle, and end, Fables: Storybook Love complicates this
structure by taking a few of the loose threads from the previous volumes and
begins to weave them through several narratives. By this point the exposition
and introduction is nicely sitting up at the front. Any new characters that are
introduced now fit into an already established world with particular rules, and
characters who have been around since the beginning grow more and more layered
with every issue. Instead of an event mediating the stories in the book, “love”
becomes the organizing concept in Storybook
Love, the permutations and combinations of which appear here.
But, the really great thing about the established universe
of Fables, is that Willingham can
step away from the present action of the story in order to move backwards in
time, where his characters have quite impressive histories of their own.
Because of that, Storybook Love
starts out by rocketing back to the Civil War, where Jack’s penchant for schemes
that put him on the losing end of things continues when he shows up with a
put-on Southern drawl. Jack is this character who is so widespread, that the
stories that follow him around cover a lot of ground. I’ve been trying to
remember where I have this sort of pre-conceived idea of the Jack stories,
since Jack Ketch showed up a couple of issues ago, and then I remembered that
when you are trying to remember where you know a piece of mythology or folklore
or literary trope from, just go back to Neil Gaiman. In Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (a throwback to The Jungle Book, except, here, the
protagonist Bod is raised by the ghosts of a graveyard), there are a slew of
Jacks who make an appearance under the name of the Jacks of All Trade,
including Jack Frost, who is nothing like his Christmas self. But this Jack is just the ex-boyfriend of
Rose Red, who, during the Civil War, managed to capture death in the Devil’s
magical bag, one that resembles the one that Hermione uses in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
(its ever expanding and can contain a whole lot of stuff – Jack has some sundry
items, a pig, and also the scythe-carrying Death trapped inside it at one
point).
The ending story of this volume likewise takes its
characters back to a time before present day Fabletown, framed by Bigby telling
Flycatcher (who is the Frog Prince in human form) a story about the
Lilliputians who now live in Smalltown. The frame story is an excellent way to
bring up this past history, and it talks a bit more about the Adversary (who we
still don’t know too much about yet). It’s used as an origin story to explain
why a group of Lilliputains from Smalltown makes the trek into Fabletown every
year to attempt to steal a few barleycorns from an old jar.
BUT: between Jack and the Lilliputians takes us back to
Fabletown and Bigby and Snow, who still unknowingly are going to have to deal
with the repercussions from disabling the revolutionary movement at Animal Farm.
For example, Bigby takes on a journalist who has dug up a
whole lot of facts about the Fables over the years. He claims that he has a
story that could bring them down, but, in a slightly different way than Bigby
is expecting. Journalist Tommy Sharpe figures that the Fables are actually
vampires, and he’s out to expose them. Diffusing the situation is Prince
Charming, Bigby, Little Boy Blue, and Bluebeard – Rose Red is still up at the
Farm taking over from Weyland Smith, and Rose is still recovering in the
hospital from being shot by Goldilocks.* It’s a discursive group set to the
task, and the relationships between them are heightened by all of the past that
is behind them. It’s sort of a heist narrative in miniature, and it has one of
those endings where a character makes a choice that is definitely coming back
to haunt them later (MAYBE?). Briar Rose is also along for the ride, pricking
her own finger as a diversion (and this is a great chance to look at Prince
Charming, who used to be married to Briar Rose [as well as Snow]; it’s their
familiarity that allows Briar Rose to invite him to live with her again – the
love between them is gone, but there’s a recognition of the way things used to
be that remains).
Next, Goldilocks is discovered hiding with Bluebeard, and
she’s still pretty upset over how things ended in Animal Farm. They’re definitely sleeping together, and their love
is a sort of mutual respect for revenge – they’re using each other to get just
exactly what they both want. She’s teamed up with Bluebeard, agreeing to kill
Bigby to cover some of Bluebeard’s untreated revenge. Using some really old and
expensive magic, they maneuver Bigby and the still recovering Snow on a camping
trip to Washington where they will be out of the way and easy to kill. Snow’s
still using crutches to get around, and while she’s close to being back to
normal, she’s not there yet. When they come to in Washington, realizing that they’ve
been there for a while sleeping in the same tent (OH AND HERE IS ANOTHER HUGE
CHOICE THAT WILL AFFECT THEM LATER), they piece together the fact that
Goldilocks is there with them, hunting them down. And Bigby gets to retreat to
his animal form with some pretty great lines like, “It’s time for a bit of the
old huff and puff.” By the end of this issue Goldilocks is well and truly
dead** and Bluebeard appears to be as well (at the hands of Prince Charming,
who says he’s doing it for Snow, showing the way that all of this old love and
the coming apart that came after still remains for all of them).
Also, Snow and Bigby are killing me with their story. It’s
so good.
* One of my favorite directions that the story is taking is
the idea that Fables have a rough time dying. But, this is based on how much
ordinary people believe in them and their stories. That means that some Fables
can die easily, but others, whose stories are well known, have a lot more
trouble slipping away.
** Although Snow says, “She’s a popular fable with the
mundys. They won’t let her die easily.”
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