"Fables: Legends in Exile" Bill Willingham

"Thank you both for coming in.  Our door is always open."

"But we weren't finished."

"Yes you were, Ma'am.  Assuming you hoped to survive your last comment.  Take my advice, some topics are best never brought up.
Never discuss personal hygiene with a  bridge troll.
Never trade casserole recipes with a Black Forest witch.
But above all, when talking to the deputy mayor...
never mention the dwarves."

Little Boy Blue escorting Beauty and the Beast out of Snow White's office.

"Fables:  Legends in Exile" Bill Willingham

"Fables" was a series recommended by other students in the Comic Books and Graphic Novels literature course I took from Coursera.  "Legends in Exile" included issues 1-5 of the series in paperback form.

The premise is that the fairy tale, legend, nursery story, and fable characters that we all grew up knowing have been exiled from their home land by the invasion of an entity called the Adversary.  The characters that are in human form or can afford an enchantment that will allow them to take human form live in an area of New York City called Fabletown, while the others, animals, animated objects, giants and Lilliputians, are relegated to a farm compound in upstate New York.

The headquarters of Fabletown and where many of the fables live is an upscale apartment building.  Old King Cole is the mayor of Fabletown, but it is really run by his deputy, Snow White, along with the sheriff, Bigby Wolf, or as we know him in his animal form, the Big Bad Wolf.

In this volume, Jack, or the beanstalk and the Jack Tales, has reported that his girlfriend Rose Red, Snow White's sister, has been murdered.  Bigby and Snow investigate the murder.  Meanwhile, preparations are in the works for Remembrance Day, an annual event to commemorate their lives before the Adversary and to raise money through donations to support the government of Fabletown.

The investigate includes Flycatcher, formerly known as the Frog Prince, Bluebeard, Prince Charming, Cinderella, one of the Three Little Pigs, the Black Forest Witch, and other well- and lesser-known fables.  It ends in an old-fashioned denouement hosted by Bigby with all the major characters in attendance.

In the course of these 5 issues we also learn some of the origin of the exile, how some of the fables escaped from the homeland, with promises of more details in future episodes.

Originally published in 2002, some of the story seems a little dated.  It is hard to think of the impact of this series when it was originally released, but I was not as smitten with "Fables" as much as "Y-the Last Man", which began at the same time.  The artwork of the pages of "Fables" is not what would draw someone to this series;  however, the cover work is great.  That is one of the advantages of buying a collection of issues, rather than one at a time, because you often get to see the cover work for all the issues and possibly multiple editions.

The story seemed a little stale to me as well, but that might not have been the case for comic book fans in 2002. My image of fairy tale and nursery story characters as real-life characters comes from Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime novel series, which was published after the first issue of "Fables" by a few years, and might have been drawn from it.  But, I read Fforde first, and think of them in that order.

I was amused by the development of character and the story line.  Learning the adult side of these characters, and how their origins may have affected their psyches, was interesting to an extent.  The noir fiction style of the investigation of Rose Red's death made Bigby the most sympathetic character.

I've already purchased the next two volumes, "Animal Farm" and "Storybook Love," so I'll be reading those soon.  My interest in continuing the series is with mixed feelings.  I hope to see more of Bigby, and hope the characters in general can escape the one-dimension their literary origins have relegated them to.