A month or two ago, Heidi from Bunbury in the Stacks and Alyssa from Books Take You Places convinced me to try the Fables graphic novel series by Bill Willingham. Boy, am I ever glad they did. I usually trust those two with fantasy recommendations, but with this one they just hit it out of the park. I put the first few on hold at the library and as of last month, I’ve read all eighteen trade paperbacks to catch up with the series. Honestly, I was a complete newbie when it came to graphic novels so I did not know where to go after I found out how much I liked them. I am a bit embarrassed to say that I basically thought my brother and several of my guy friends from college were pretty lame for reading comic books. I chuckled at my younger sister for watching Sailor Moon and reading some manga. This post is basically me doing an intervention on myself:
Dear Flannery,
You were a complete idiot. Comics and graphic novels are amazing, or at least they can be. You were stupid to ever think people who read them were not really reading and anyone else who still thinks something along those lines is also an idiot. There might not be as much text going on but when done right, there is just as much story, the characters have just as much (if not more) personality, and you get the absolute bonus of seeing a visualization of so many aspects of a book.
Sincerely,
Flannery
But I’ll head back to Fables for now, so you can see if this series might also work for you.
Dear Flannery,
You were a complete idiot. Comics and graphic novels are amazing, or at least they can be. You were stupid to ever think people who read them were not really reading and anyone else who still thinks something along those lines is also an idiot. There might not be as much text going on but when done right, there is just as much story, the characters have just as much (if not more) personality, and you get the absolute bonus of seeing a visualization of so many aspects of a book.
Sincerely,
Flannery
But I’ll head back to Fables for now, so you can see if this series might also work for you.
Bill Willingham has imagined a world inside of our world, where characters from fables and folklore exist alongside us. The “Mundies” (us) are unaware that a section of New York City is actually Fabletown, with (at the beginning of the series) Old King Cole as mayor, Bigby (the Big Bad) Wolf as sheriff, and Snow White as head administrator. There is a farm in upstate New York where all the non-human Fables or those who are unable to blend into normal society live, from the three blind mice to Baloo and Sheer Kahn from Kipling’s The Jungle Book to Orwell’s maniacal pigs from Animal Farm. Willingham writes the entire series so the voices remain constant and for the most part, the artistry is consistent. Because each of the trade paperbacks compiles several of the issues, there are usually several smaller story arcs and one or more larger arcs going on in the 250-odd pages in each installment. The first edition, Legends in Exile, opens with Jack (of all the Tales—Jack Horner, Jack Be Nimble, Jack Frost, etc.) alerting Bigby that Rose Red, Snow White’s sister, has disappeared. Her apartment is completely ransacked and covered in blood. We are introduced to several characters as the mystery unfolds and I actually found the mystery to be far less predictable than some so-called mystery novels I have read in the past. But in the larger scheme of the series, the first installment is probably somewhere in the middle of the spectrum in terms of quality, in my opinion. It must be hard to introduce a rather bottomless cast of characters while solving a crime in such a contained amount of space and text so I just went with it, but I can see how it might be a challenge to keep up with everyone and always know what's going on. In addition, the sense of humor and occasional swearing and sexual content might not appeal to some fairy tale fans. (One of the library copies I read had the sex scenes ripped out, bahaha. I hope there is a tween boy somewhere with them folded up under his pillow.) As the series went on, I was more and more invested in the characters, their backstories, and their interconnections to the point that I was giddy when I saw issues devoted to certain characters and audibly groaned when I saw others pop up. (If you're wondering, I love the cubs, Bigby, Flycatcher, and Rose Red and I don't really care about Pinocchio, Gepetto, Jack, Beauty and the Beast, or Bluebeard.)
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It is hard to review an entire series, as I do not want to give any spoilers away, but I will say that my favorite installments of the eighteen have been March of the Wooden Soldiers (#4), which deals with an impending war in the Fable Homelands, The Good Prince (#10), which deals with the Frog Prince, and Rose Red (#15), which tells about a lot of said character’s background. The only total miss for me was in Volume 16, The Great Fables Crossover, when Willingham attempted to bring Jack’s offshoot series (unsurprisingly called Jack of Fables) and the regular Fables together. Jack’s character is a womanizer, a schmoozing con-man and oftentimes a total jackass. A lot of readers seem to dislike him or love him. I am generally apathetic but I would rather read about no less than thirty other Fables before I read about him so I have only read the first Jack of Fables installment. (The (Nearly) Great Escape) The crossover edition was hard to enjoy as readers unfamiliar with the storylines in Jack’s series (read: me) have no idea what was going on. Characters in that series made less sense to me even after I read one installment—there seems to be another hidden Fable community containing the usual fairy tale-ish characters, but also Literals, characters who are part of the writing process—the Pathetic Fallacy, Revise, Genres etc. I had/have a harder time getting my head around the idea of those characters existing alongside the Fables in the real world. As in a few other books I’ve read in the past, most notably Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, Fables are kept alive by their popularity. A popular Fable is harder to kill and more likely to come back to life, whereas a lesser known Fable might disappear forever. It is confusing to me where characters like Revise and the Genres come from and who, if anyone, is perpetuating their existence.
At its worst, Fables volumes are three star reads, but it is very consistently four star (and even five star) fun reading for me. I cannot wait for the next trade paperback to come out. Or, perhaps I should just suck it up and venture into a comic book store for the first time in my life. If you are looking for an entry point to read graphic novels, this was mine and it absolutely got me hooked. I do not recommend just picking up any later installment as you will miss character and story development and I imagine you would be pretty lost. Start at the beginning and give it two editions before you decide on whether to continue. In other news, stay tuned for several posts about the eighty or ninety graphic novels I've read so far this year since starting this series. No joke.
Here's my roundup of ratings for each installment (and a few offshoot books):
At its worst, Fables volumes are three star reads, but it is very consistently four star (and even five star) fun reading for me. I cannot wait for the next trade paperback to come out. Or, perhaps I should just suck it up and venture into a comic book store for the first time in my life. If you are looking for an entry point to read graphic novels, this was mine and it absolutely got me hooked. I do not recommend just picking up any later installment as you will miss character and story development and I imagine you would be pretty lost. Start at the beginning and give it two editions before you decide on whether to continue. In other news, stay tuned for several posts about the eighty or ninety graphic novels I've read so far this year since starting this series. No joke.
Here's my roundup of ratings for each installment (and a few offshoot books):
Volume 1: Legends in Exile 4/5 stars | 
Volume 2: Animal Farm 4/5 stars | 
Volume 3: Storybook Love 4/5 stars | 
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Volume 5: The Mean Seasons 4/5 stars | 
Volume 6: Homelands 4/5 stars | 
Volume 7: Arabian Nights 4/5 stars | 
Volume 8: Wolves 4/5 stars |
Volume 9: Sons of Empire 3/5 stars | 
Volume 10: The Good Prince 5/5 stars | 
Volume 11: War and Pieces 3/5 stars | 
Volume 12: The Dark Ages 4/5 stars |
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Volume 14: Witches 4/5 stars | 
Volume 15: Rose Red 5/5 stars | 
Volume 16: Super Team 3/5 stars |
Volume 17: Inherit the Wind 4/5 stars | 
Volume 18: Cubs in Toyland 4/5 stars | 
Werewolves of the Heartland 3/5 stars | 
Fairest, vol. 1: Wide Awake 3/5 stars |
Have you read any of this series? What are your favorite graphic novels?
