Willingham, Bill - Fables: Storybook Love

[oyceter]

I am officially in love with this comic now. I liked it a whole lot before, but this one had me smiling and laughing and generally having a wonderful time.

Fables actually reminds me a bit of Sandman, except at this point, it's not quite as broad or as deep. They both have stories at the center, but while Sandman takes everyday life and makes it mythic, Fables takes the mythic and makes it everyday.

This collection is actually framed by two sort-of fairy tales -- the first one is a story of Jack in the Confederate South, and as Willingham puts it, "This story was freely adapted from a couple of the Mountain Jack Tales of American Folklore. In true oral tradition, it's been much altered under my care, which is a polite way of saying that I stole everything I thought I could use, changed a bunch of stuff to suit my whims, and made up the rest." The second is a story of what happens when Thumbelina is the only thumb-sized girl in a city of Lilliputians tale.

Then there's a two-parter, which leads to Storybook Love (actually only four issues). For Who Killed Rose Red? and Animal Farm, I liked the Fables characters, particularly Bigby (the Big Bad Wolf in human form) and Snow White, but now I've just fallen completely for them. Most of the characters are more caricature than character in the beginning books, funny sketches of what fairy tale characters would be like in the real world if they were immortal, but Willingham's started to really make them his own characters by the middle of the second book. There's an interesting mix of ruthlessness and goodness in them, and while the world is by no means warm and fuzzy, Willingham isn't nearly as bleak as Alan Moore can be. And I like how the threads of plot from the first two books tie in and the continuity in general. I'm a sucker for continuity and slow world-building, which is why I like long series and TV shows.

And Bigby and Snow are so cute! I particularly love Snow White and her practical, business-minded self, and Bigby is much in the tradition of Wolverine.

While the first two books of Fables were really good, to me, this one started really opening up the world for side things, like the new folktales, and I'm particularly looking forward to more stories from the Homeland. I really like how the structure of the Fables world supports this, which is what reminded me the most of Sandman. Hellboy's sort of got the same appeal in terms of short stories, but Hellboy's overriding arcs are pretty messy and the characterization isn't quite as neatly drawn.

Sigh. Now I really want to start buying the issues monthly, which is not at all practical.

Oh, also, there are rodent deaths in Storybook Love. Somehow I doubt anyone else on my FL is quite as squeamish about this as me (what with the pet mice and rats), but I sniffled.

Comments

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Wow, those sound neat. Are they bound in book form yet? ((too lazy to go look))

Willingham isn't nearly as bleak as Alan Moore can be

d00d, I think Alan Moore would depress Poe.

[oyceter]

They are ^_^. Issues 1-18 are out in book form (Who Killed Rose Red/Legends in Exile is bk. 1, Animal Farm is bk. 2, and this is bk. 3).

Gah, I admire Moore, but I can only take so much of him at a time.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Ooooooooooooh! ((adds to list)) (I don't have a prejudice against reading comics individually per se, I just ALWAYS lose an issue or tear them to shreds, or Max gets at them. So I prefer book form.)

I bought From Hell after seeing the movie and read it about in a day and a half. There should be a cautionary sticker warning against doing this.

[oyceter]

I don't either, but I calculated the costs, and the graphic novel is about ten bucks cheaper. Plus, there's the handy book form and the harder-to-misplace thing. And I like being able to read the spine.

Gah! I never even finished that one! I think I watched the movie right before dinner, which was a horrible, horrible idea... no appetite for days. Have you read Watchmen? It was a great look at superhero comics, but oh so dark.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Ah, hadn't thought of the cheapness aspect....also easier to store, oh yes. -- Man, if anything, the movie was less graphic than the comic, even given all the BRIGHT RED BLOOD, because it went into much more detail. I loved Watchmen, actually -- that was the second "grown-up" comic I ever read, right after Sandman (all of it belonging to the evil ex-fiance, who was actually something of a cartoonist and had a lot of cool graphic art, like Krazy Kat, besides the usual Calvin & Hobbes &c.). That was in what, 1990....ghod I'm old....

[oyceter]

I hit the cheapness aspect when I realized the first issue of 1602 was $6 for 32 pages =(.

I love Watchmen, but there's a limit to how often I can read it -- the entire nested story of the guy stranded on a desert island freaks me out every single time.

My first "grown-up" comic was probably... hrm, Dark Knight Returns, back in ninth grade. Found Sandman in 11th, and there was no turning back ;).

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Awww. Yeah, Watchmen is pretty heavy-duty (Rorscharch is the one who really gets me every time, I guess). How did you find Sandman? Neil wrote amusingly one time that they were sexually transmitted, from comics guys to their girlfriends -- I do seem to remember Sandman busting open the floodgates for female comics readers, although I have like NO knowledge of comics history really and should so just shut up at this point.

Ya know, I remember watching the Dark Knight half-hour television shows and thinking some of them were pretty good, or the art was, at least....the one that was kinda edgy, and then it got yanked off and redone or something....one about the Gray Ghost was fairly cool, although that's really about all I remember of that series (except for one where they're stuck in some whack amusement park and Batman reprograms the Fickle Flying Finger of Fate, or something).

Wow! unable to remember my own zip code yesterday, yet the neurons were still holding onto all that. Brain keeps what Brain wants, apparently.

[oyceter]

How did I find Sandman? Heh, you know, I don't even remember. I must have just heard about it a lot on the internet somehow, because I remember wandering in to the graphic novels section of a bookstore and seeing it and somehow having the impression that it was critically acclaimed. I picked up Dream Country and Fables and Reflections, because that was all they had, and got hooked by Death.

I think I must be one of those weird exceptions to that rule! I've always been interested in comics -- my sister and I used to watch that 60's Batman show when I was 6 or 7, and we'd act it out (I got to be Catwoman). I borrowed The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told sometime in middle school and glommed on that obsessively (I was so surprised in junior year when I found out Dick Grayson was no longer Robin). I remember looking on jealously in 9th grade while all the guys in the class traded graphic novels, and I finally asked one of them if I could borrow theirs (ended up reading Dark Phoenix Saga, Dark Knight Returns, Infinity Gauntlet, Death of Superman).

The really funny thing is that my boyfriend has zero knowledge of comics, with the exception of Tintin. I nearly dropped dead with laughter the day I discovered he had no idea who Bruce Wayne was. So I'm the one dragging us to all the comic book movies ^_^.

"Database temporarily unavailable" my fanny

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

I remember looking on jealously in 9th grade while all the guys in the class traded graphic novels, and I finally asked one of them if I could borrow theirs (ended up reading Dark Phoenix Saga, Dark Knight Returns, Infinity Gauntlet, Death of Superman).

Aww, that's cute. Dark Phoenix is X-Men, right? I vaguely remember that animated series (OK, sometimes I still like cartoons on Saturday mornings). I remember Evil Willow got a "Dark Phoenix time" reference in the script....

The really funny thing is that my boyfriend has zero knowledge of comics, with the exception of Tintin. I nearly dropped dead with laughter the day I discovered he had no idea who Bruce Wayne was.

HEH. Tim's not that bad, butyeah, he really doesn't know comics either -- I think he was a little nonplussed once when I got a lot of Neil Gaiman books all at once. I think he was into comics when he was a kid, but it really didn't stick.

[tiffanynichelle.livejournal.com]

sigh, I love Bigby/Snow also. Esp when he told her how he can't block out her sent.

[oyceter]

Hee, I thought it was sweet but also sort of creepy.

[tiffanynichelle.livejournal.com]

LOL, I swooned. I couldn't help it.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I'm up to the same point with Fables as you are, but I thought that all the characters were so ruthless I was having a hrad time caring what happened to any of them.

Plus the fact that it strikes me as one of the rarish explicitly conservative-oriented fantasy universes - voluntary taxation, heavy "my old man got on his bike and looked for work" attitude, sneering at liberal attitudes to crime as denying personal repsonsibility. And the air of self-conscious moral brutalism that tends to come out of modern American conservatism. And the fact that the only left-wing character is a power-hungry, hypocritical villain into bestiality.

[oyceter]

I can see the ruthlessness of several of the key characters (Charming, Bluebeard, Goldilocks), but for some reason Fables doesn't strike me as being as bleak as much as, say, Alan Moore or George R. R. Martin's works.

I actually didn't pick up on the conservative orientation, and I already returned it to the library! Doh. I'm going to have to reread them again now with this in mind.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I hate to come across like a sap but I had to table Quicksilver after the dog scene. I just wish they would come with some kind of warning label.

And this series? sounds really good. Thanks.

[oyceter]

Quicksilver?

The series is good ^_^. KdS is much less enthusiastic and think Willingham's characters are on the ruthless side though, fyi.

But I've just gone and bought all of them off Amazon, hee hee.