Someday I'll Figure Out What This is About

For the past couple months Greg and I have made a weekly (or most-weekly) event out of visiting the comic store on Thursday. Wednesday is officially “new comic book day,” but we figure we miss the rush if we check it out the day after. While we don’t make it every week, we’re regular enough that they recognize us there, making us doubly-nerdy since the guys at EB Games seem to know us too.

It’s been a while since I’ve found anything long-running that I’d consider really good. Five or six years ago I tore though the Sandman graphic novels in quick succession, but there hasn’t been anything that’s gotten me that interested until recently: Bill Willingham‘s Fables is fantastic.

I got off to a slow start with Fables. It’s about 55 issues into its run now, and I started reading somewhere around 48. At the time, it seemed good (certainly good enough to warrant picking up each new issue), but lacking the context of the previous 47 issues, I didn’t really get into it until I went back and started reading from the beginning. By the time I got to the second collected series, I was hooked. I finished the fifth and sixth collections last week and am most of the way through number seven right now. That pretty much gets me caught up to where I started.

It’s kind of hard to explain the premise without making it sound childish: a group of characters from fables have fled from their various homelands as each was invaded by “The Adversary” and his armies. They now live in an area in New York city known as “Fabletown” or, for those fables like The Three Bears or Mother Goose who can’t fit into human society, there’s also “The Farm” in upstate New York. The early stories primarily involve Snow White, Fabletown’s deputy mayor, and the sheriff, a reformed Big Bad (“Bigby“) Wolf, now able to take human form.

It sounds goofy, but Willingham does an excellent job of telling adult stories with characters from children’s fables. The first collection is an Agatha Christy-style murder mystery; the second collection features a communist revolution taking place at The Farm led by, obviously, the three little pigs. Later collections deal more with the conflict between the fable refugees and the forces of the Adversary, doing an excellent job of interleaving action-packed episodes and more character driven sections. While the early issues focus primarily on Snow White and Bigby Wolf, more and more characters get to take center stage as the series progresses.

I’m not the only one who thinks you should have a look – it’s won the Eisner Award for Best Serialized Story three out of the last four years. If you’re at all a fan of graphic novels and haven’t already given Fables a try, I’d highly recommend having a look. Even if you don’t consider yourself a fan of “comics,” Fables could be the series that changes your mind.