Happily Ever After? A Fables Retrospective

By Corinne McCreery

In 2002, a comic that I would come to love deeply started coming out. It was a story of fairy-tale characters trying to live in the ‘real world’, and built on how deeply flawed all of these characters tended to be. I was still years away from moving past superhero comics, I had yet to dip my feet into any Vertigo books whatsoever; not Sandman, not Hellblazer, not even Swamp Thing. Fables was my first introduction to different types of stories being told by the comic medium, and I started collecting the series with issue #19 in January of 2004. Over all my years of comic fandom, it is the only series to which I got a print subscription, so that I’d never miss an issue. The series ended with issue #150 on its own terms back in 2015, with a supersized final issue to wrap everything up. It was a good ending, and it gave the characters I’d spent a decade with their own “happily ever after.” Recently an Absolute Edition collecting the beginning of the series was announced, and I felt the desire to reread the series.

I’ll be rereading the series volume by volume to take a deeper critical look at a series I loved so deeply for so long, and to see how well the narrative and characters still hold up. First up is 2002’s Legends in Exile, covering the first five issues of the series, and serving as a basic introduction to the premise.

Fables: Legends In Exile

Craig Hamilton (inker), James Jean (covers), Todd Klein (letters), Steve Leialoha (inker), Alex Maleev (covers), Lan Medina (penciller), Sherilyn van Valkenburgh (colorist), Bill Willingham (writer)
Vertigo Comics
July 2002-November 2002

With the gift of hindsight, it becomes pretty obvious that this opening volume of Fables is still trying to decide what it’s going to become. The art isn’t what we’ll come to identify as the signature style of the book yet, and indeed, most of the art team is going to shift by the next volume. Lan Medina pencils this first arc, but then returns for only four more issues over the remainder of the series. Medina’s pencils are less stylized or cartoony than the man who would replace him as the series main artist for the rest of its run. While that does sort of work for this opening volume, it is not a fit for the series as a whole.

Part of the reason the art in this volume is less impressive to me than later arcs is because of colorist Sherilyn van Valkenburgh. Her coloring style is flat and unimpressive, lacking any noticeable coloring tricks. This is especially visible in the faces of characters, and specifically in the faces of women. Skin tones in this volume all seem to be a single flat color (with little variation between characters as well), without an ounce of shadow. The only exception seems to be when she thinks a character should be wearing rouge, and in those cases it is abundantly applied.

One thing that does remain very consistent through this and the rest of the series is the lettering, as industry legend Todd Klein would be the sole letterer for not only all 150 issues of Fables, but also every issue of both spin-off series: Fairest and Jack of Fables. Klein won seven of his seventeen Eisner awards for years in which he was lettering Fables, and it’s not difficult to see why. His lettering is impeccable, especially outside of standard word balloons, when he’s allowed to play up the storybook aspects of the book.

The other very consistent piece of Fables in the early days of the series are the covers. While James Jean only provided the variant cover for the first issue of the series (the main cover was done by the also fantastic Ales Maleev), he would go on to be the series primary cover artist until he retired from illustrating in 2009. Much like Klein on letters, Jean’s cover paintings were very substantial to the feel of the series. Also much like Klein, his work on the series was heavily praised, and lauded with Eisner Awards, sweeping the Cover Art category for the duration of his time on the title. Jean’s cover paintings were so remarkably beautiful that they were collected in their entirety as their own work.

So I’ve talked about the art, and the letters, and the covers, but what about the writing? The whole series is the brainchild of Bill Willingham, and he would write every issue and also contribute heavily to the spin-off series. Willingham’s writing was the thing I was most worried about in returning to the series, because over the past few years, he’s espoused some pretty misogynistic opinions. I was worried that my love for the series is colored more by nostalgia than it is for actual quality, and feared that I may have ignored some misogyny in the series prior to my transition.

Both look to be true. The writing of the first volume is solid enough, laying out a pretty compelling murder mystery and doing some introductory work with various characters. The cast of Fables eventually will be vast, but for this first volume we only really get to know a small handful, and their personalities don’t seem to be fully fleshed out yet. There are glimpses of who they will become, but they aren’t there yet. This is most notable with Snow White and Boy Blue. Blue in this volume is mostly just a background character, there primarily to move the plot and provide comedic effect. Snow on the other hand, is a lot colder here than she will be through most of the series. Especially prominent are her extremely libertarian views on governing, where she espouses a no help from the government philosophy. While meeting with Beauty and the Beast, she comes off as cold and unfeeling, as she tells them to essentially pull themselves up by their bootstraps, while criticizing the outside world (Mundy) governments for offering too many handouts for their citizens. She basically threatens the couple with deportation if they can’t solve their marital woes. She’s nowhere near likable in this opening arc, and that’s something I know changes. 

There is also a hint of that misogyny that I had hoped not to find, as there is some rampant slut shaming by several characters. Still, it’s not enough to completely derail my enjoyment, but it did jump out at me. In the first volume of the series we get an awful lot of slut shaming from characters that are meant to be empathetic characters. Beauty attacks Snow White’s sexual history by pointedly bringing up what we will later find out to be times in which Snow White was sexually assaulted (we’ll get to that much later in this series). It’s clear in hindsight that Beauty only knew rumors, and not the gruesome details, but it’s still a spiteful and catty thing to bring up in that moment. Snow herself also uses slut shaming language when talking to Prince Charming, telling him to go back to whoever his current whore is. Lest you were worried that all the misogyny be put into the mouths of women, don’t fret, because Bigby Wolf gets in on the slutshaming while questioning Bluebeard. Oddly enough, no misogyny comes from the mouth of Bluebeard himself in this volume, despite him being a supposedly much more detestable character than Bigby, Snow or Beauty. It seems that Willingham is so okay with misogyny that he is fine with it coming from characters who are supposed to be the biggest heroes of his story. 

When I recently proposed this volume for a monthly book club, it was recommended that instead I propose the second volume of the series instead. I didn’t and we voted on both, winding up going with neither. Now that I’ve reread the first volume, I’m inclined to agree. While Legends in Exile is a good stand-alone story, it’s not really representative of what the series will become in later volumes. The characters are there, but not fleshed out, and the overarching story of the series has barely come into play. The art will change dramatically, and so will the overall tone of the series. The first volume is a perfectly serviceable murder mystery, but the depth of the tale is yet to come.

Fables: Animal Farm

Mark Buckingham (penciller), James Jean (covers), Todd Klein (letters), Steve Leialoha (inker), Daniel Vozzo (colorist), Bill Willingham (writer)
Vertigo Comics
December 2002-April 2003

This volume gets a little more into the meat of the ongoing narrative of the series, giving us more exposition as to what’s really going on in the lives of our Fables. It doesn’t really expand our cast of characters all that much, but it really gets further into the meat of what makes two of them tick.

Snow White in particular is much closer to the character I fell in love with over the course of this series. She’s still a bit cold and aloof, but much less so than in the first volume. She’s also somehow both less of an authoritarian and more competent and in control, if that makes sense. In the first volume, she not only treats her citizens harshly, but also uses her power to get personal revenge on others. She uses her political authority to make her ex-husband suffer, in a way that really didn’t align with the libertarian views she displayed with Beauty. She essentially taxes his raffle income at about 99%, which isn’t something you often associate with that political philosophy. In this volume she’s portrayed smarter and more detail oriented in a way to make the things she wants to happen happen, without it seeming like she is abusing her power. Never is this more the case than the climax of the arc, when she’s commanding a dragon and giants to quell a rebellion.

We also get to see what’s in the core of Rose Red’s character. There is a bit of an inferiority complex, mixed with abandonment issues. She holds Snow’s popularity and adulation against her, fearing that she’ll never truly measure up, and in doing so she willfully sabotages any relationship the two of them have built. By the end of the arc though, she seems to be growing past those behaviors, and is not afraid to try to make her own name.

The third character we learn a substantial bit about is Goldilocks. Herein lies my biggest problem with this arc. Goldilocks is irrefutably the villain of this arc, and is never painted any other way than that. However, other than the militancy with which she works towards her goals, she appears to be very much an intersectional activist. The militancy is the problem, not the belief system she is supposedly fighting for, but at times the two are so intertwined in her pathology that it can be hard to separate for the reader. While on a deeper read, you can see that Goldi’s activism is surface level at best, on a first read it may not seem that way. In today’s political climate that hit the wrong chord with me, and even taking into account when it was written, it still riles me. 2002-2003 wasn’t some glorious time of glorious peace and happiness, we had political leaders then well worth protesting and fighting against, just as we do now. Painting that activism as villainy is painfully shortsighted and dangerous. 

The plot of this arc revolves around the characters relegated to the Farm, a patch of land in up-state New York, where non-human Fables were relegated. Mostly talking animals, the characters on the Farm take umbrage to the human Fables that are able to peaceably live in the city, and many of them wish to try to reclaim their homelands from the mysterious “Adversary”. The Farm Fables feel like they’re second class citizens, without the same rights as the rest of the Fables, and honestly, they make a very good case of it. They’re relegated to some enchanted woodland, and not allowed to leave, while the more human looking characters get to explore the world. Like I said, I support their cause, but their methods are what drive the leaders of their rebellion into villain territory.

Ring leaders Dun the Pig and Goldilocks use extreme means to try to kick off their rebellion, including the sacrifice of Dun’s brother Colin because they feel he wasn’t contributing enough to the cause. While Dun first appears to be the power behind the revolution of the Farm, it quickly comes to light that the real mastermind is Goldilocks. Having a blonde, white woman pulling the strings of a movement that will likely get many of the Farm Fables killed is actually quite clever and insidious in an allegorical sense. Here’s a supposed ally, who is saying all the right things about equality while being the first person to throw you under the bus for her personal gain. All she really cares about is power, and she’s more than willing to send other Fables to their deaths in a foreign land to get it. 

As clear as that allegory is, I don’t think it was intentional, mostly because in the first two volumes of the series none of the named characters have been minorities. In fact, only one person of color is seen at all. A single unnamed woman appears during the Remembrance Day ball, never to be spoken of again. It’s easy to accidentally make your villain a blonde, white woman when your options are blonde, brunette, or redheaded white people. It’s easy to see Willingham’s intention was that European Fables are all white, but it didn’t have to be that way. There have been people of color in Europe for centuries, and it would have been much more subversive to include some diversity in the cast of characters. As it stands, it still sends a message, but not nearly as strong of one as it could have. 

The problems with diversity also extends to the protagonists, as both Snow White and Rose Red are also white women (of the other two available natural hair colors). Having three white women be the leaders on both sides of what is essentially a civil war is problematic on it’s own, but when coupled with the fact that all of the cannon fodder of said war is the closest thing this book has to persecuted minorities, and yikes. The end result of the arc is that the status quo of the Farm is reset. The non-human Fables are still relegated to a patch of land in the middle of nowhere, they’re still governed by a human Fable, and still overall at the whims of the human Fables in Fabletown. The only slight shift in what had been the norm is that the weapons programs they had set up for the rebellion are kept going, so yay to the military industrial complex. The ringleaders of the rebellion and active participants are rounded up to be punished, with the remaining Pigs being executed and replaced, and others like Mama Bear and Papa Bear put into indentured servitude. Of course, the only rebellion leader not punished is Goldilocks, who escapes after attempting to assassinate Snow with a sniper rifle. Once again, having the supposed ally get away scott free while all of the persecuted minorities are held accountable, is a powerful statement, and one that I’m not sure Willingham intended. 

We also get glimpses of how some of the Fable magic works in a couple of ways. The more beloved a Fable is by the Mundies, the more powerful they are. It’s why Snow White who, thanks to Disney, is one of the most popular fairy tale characters of all time, is able to survive a headshot from Goldilocks’ sniper rifle. It’s also why despite the three little pigs all not making it through this story, they’re easily replaced by the three slumbering giants. Some Fables must always exist, because they live in the hearts of children everywhere. It’s a little corny, but also an extremely interesting concept.

Willingham has said that he did not intend Fables to be a political statement, but that seems hard to believe when your second storyline is entitled Animal Farm, centers on talking pigs and political revolution, and paints intersectionality as banal. Art doesn’t live in a vacuum, and the political climate in which this story was written has obvious connotations to the story being told. In the end, despite being thrown down and having its ringleaders executed for treason, the rebellion did serve its purpose.

While Snow, Rose, and Goldy are the primary focus characters of this arc, we do see some improvements of other characters as well. Namely, Boy Blue is moving beyond his introduction as purely comedic relief, and we can see some semblance of competency starting to show from behind his boyish facade. Blue goes on to become my favorite character in the series, so I’m very much looking forward to that progression.

Moving on from the plot of the book and into the art, it was much improved in this volume. Mark Buckingham joins the creative team, and while his style will evolve over the course of the series, it's very easy to see the beginnings of how these characters will look for the next 145 issues with this arc. Buckingham’s style is a much closer fight for the tone of the book.

Also vastly improved is the coloring in this volume. Daniel Vozzo provides colors that are vibrant and distinct, and shading that allows you to easier distinguish between characters. Thankfully gone are the overly rosy cheeks that provided the only variation in van Valkenburgh’s faces. Between Buckingham’s pencils and Vozzo’s colors, this is much closer to what I remember falling in love with.

So, two volumes into a reread, and what’s the verdict so far? While it’s not quite what I remember, but we’ve gotten nowhere near my favorite stories of the series yet. Going into this reread, I was worried about Willingham’s misogyny, and while it’s present, it doesn’t permeate the book, at least not yet. Most of it so far has been characters slut-shaming each other, humor at the sake of bisexuality, or casual misogyny from characters very much expected to be lecherous assholes. None of these so far has been a breaking point, but I’m now unsure of how much I’m willing to recommend the series to friends. Indeed, if I were to start it today, I don’t know if I’d make it past the first two volumes. That’s a shame, because I have the knowledge that there are some very good stories in this series coming very soon, but the barrier to make it to them may be a little too high.

Please join me next quarter as I delve into Storybook Love, The Last Castle, and A Wolf In The Fold in the next installment of Happily Ever After?