By Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham & others (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-388-6
Fables is one of those blessed delights that makes a reviewers job almost impossible. Series of matchless quality that still improve with each volume are rare and most welcome but you soon run out of superlatives to express your enthusiasm, so unless the reviewer wants to cross the border into Spoiler Territory (giving away a plot to a potential fan ought to be a Capital Offence) you really have nothing to offer: therefore I’m repeating my standard short review: Best One Yet – Get Them All.
Still and all you might want a little more, so…
The monthly comicbook Fables details the exploits of fairytale and storybook characters that we humans regard as fictional, living secret immortal lives among us, refugees from a monstrous all-consuming Adversary who had conquered their original otherworldly homelands.
Allow me to elucidate. Keeping their true nature hidden from humanity the Fables have created enclaves where their magic and sheer strangeness (all the talking animals are sequestered on a remote farm in upstate New York, for example) keep them luxuriously safe. Many characters do wander the human world, but always under strict injunction not to draw attention. These magical, perfect, cynical yet perversely human creatures dream of one day returning to their own homes and interrupted lives.
They used to live with the constant threat that their all-consuming foe would one day find them…
However their nemesis has been revealed as the puppeteer Geppetto, who used his ability to carve living, sentient beings out of wood to build all-powerful armies, soon supplemented with goblins, monsters and collaborators who joined rather than die when his unstoppable marionette forces came marching in. ruling in anonymity from behind his greatest creation the Emperor. Geppetto has almost conquered all of Reality, but now with his secret revealed the indomitable refugees of Fabletown are planning to retaliate…
Collecting issues # 48-51 of the monthly comic this volume brings everybody up to speed with the handy ‘Who’s Who in Fabletown’ featurette before the eponymous two-parter ‘Wolves’ (illustrated by Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha & Andrew Pepoy) finds the eternally young Mowgli prowling the Arctic hinterlands attempting to track down absent friend – and experienced warrior – Bigby; shape-changing Big Bad Wolf and son of the storm god known alternately as Mr. North and the Great North Wind.
When the mortals of Siberia prove useless the Jungle Boy turns to the wolves and soon discovers what he needs. Meanwhile back in America on the farm Bigby’s cubs are growing increasingly hard to handle…
Of course Mowgli is eventually successful and Bigby returns to Fabletown, although not without some pretty conniving convincing, just in time for the celebratory 50th issue extravaganza which opens with ‘Secret Agent Man’ as Bigby undertakes an covert mission deep into the Adversary’s territory, reviews the Fables indescribably unique war-resources in ‘Castles in the Sky’ before dropping ‘Behind Enemy Lines’ to set up a spectacular confrontation and coup.
Breathtaking in its audacity ‘The Israel Analogy’ establishes a new relationship between Geppetto and the refugee Fables before Bigby returns to Earth in ‘Home is the Hunter’ for a different kind of confrontation and unexpected revelation with Snow White (long-abandoned mother of his cubs) in ‘Restoration’ leading to a reconciliation in ‘The Big Valley’ and ending, as proper stories should, in ‘The Wedding’. There’s even a pithy little epilogue ‘Mr. and Mrs. Wolf’ for all us helpless romantics…
Shawn McManus then illustrates ‘Big and Small’ wherein special emissary Cinderella goes to extraordinary lengths to maintain allies amongst both giants and mouse governments, which ends the narrative portion of this splendid tome but there are still treats in store beginning with assorted ‘Maps of the Fable Territories’ and ending with the complete script to Fables #50, illustrated by cover illustrator James Jean.
There is nothing around today that can touch this series for imagination, style and quality, and you’ll never know the real meaning of “happy ever after†until you turn on to this magnificent saga.
© 2006 Bill Willingham and DC Comics. All rights reserved.