“So this is it,” I think to myself. 75
issues of daring adventures, genre-inspired fun and
delightful romantic complications and the major story arc
of the Fables series has come to an end. The Adversary is
defeated, the Homelands regained and a new balance of power
has been established. Fables tells the story of popular
fairy tale characters and their exile in our present day
New York. Throughout the series, they have been hunted by
the Adversary and his subordinates. They have only barely
averted a full-scale invasion of their new home in
Fables 4: March of the
Wooden Soldiers.
They have uncovered the Adversary’s identity in
Fables 6:
Homelands (and he
is not Peter Pan, even though Willingham’s sketches on
his blog look intriguing). And as the Adversary
was plotting to annihilate them in Fables 9: Sons of
Empire, our
heroes decided to strike the first blow of an all-out
war, which comes to its conclusion in Fables 11: War and
Pieces.
The volume opens with issue 70 “Kingdom Come”, drawn by
Niko Henrichon, in which the last preparations for the war
are chronicled. Henrichon’s gig is the latest in a series
of guest illustrators, which have added variety to Fables’
visual style. The contrast to Mark Buckingham, the main
illustrator, could not be more marked. Buckingham’s art is
both neat and gorgeous; Henrichon’s is overly detailed, but
animated. Which style you prefer is certainly a question of
temperament, but as Buckingham takes over as illustrator
with issue 71 “Skulduggery Part 1” his superior skill in
page layout, panelling and rendering character perspective
is obvious.
“Skulduggery” tells of a mission of Cinderella, special
agent extraordinaire in Fabletown’s secret service.
Cinderella has had several lifetimes to perfect her
espionage skills and her proficiency in martial arts. But
also when it comes to style—another basic requirement of
the spy as the likes of James Bond and Emma Peel taught
us—Cinderella is second to none. Mark Buckingham includes
her trademark slipper in details of her clothing and the
panel layout of her tale. The black and white design of the
slipper reminds both of Cinderella’s tale and the chique of
the 1960s, which is the basic backdrop for the espionage
genre. With the “Skulduggery” series both Willingham and
Buckingham display their mastery in bringing together fairy
tale tradition and popular genres of storytelling once
more. It is a pleasure to read and leaves me with high
hopes for the Cinderella mini series “From Fabletown with
Love”, which has been announced for the next year.
With issue 73 “War and Pieces” proper begins. The remaining
issues of the volume tell of the war between fairy tale
characters and Adversary. Willingham has us follow Little
Boy Blue who is the main communications line between the
different sites of the war effort due to his teleporting
cloak. With this conceit, Willingham ties together the
events onboard the flying ship “Glory”, in the imperial
capital, at Fort Bravo (site of the fairy tale characters’
last stand), in Fabletown and on The Farm. Buckingham’s
page layout then provides information on setting and the
characters involved through the framing panels on the left
and right of every page. When Little Boy Blue is on the
farm, we see the roofs of the farm; when he is in the
imperial capital, we see the steeples and Italianesque
columns; when he is aboard the “Glory”, we see the
figurehead of the ship. As Fables is an ensemble piece with
many different settings and characters, each with their own
agenda, Willingham and Buckingham needed to provide a means
of orientation for readers between these perspectives and
venues. The framing panels have been developed into such a
means of orientation by Buckingham since
Fables 7: Arabian Nights
(and Days). Now,
in Fables 11: War
and Pieces, they
are again employed to manage all the different settings and
perspectives involved in a story reminiscent in scope of
Tolstoy’s ensemble novel War and Peace.
But Buckingham
goes further in his use of the framing panels in
Fables 11: War and
Pieces. He starts
to introduce variation. The framing panels become the first
of a series of elongated vertical panels which continually
depict both the story space and the events across the page.
As the action of battle begins to unfold, Buckingham not
only produces exquisite splashpanel compositions of the
engaging armies, but uses these elongated panels to render
the intense moments of battle, provide a sense of progress
in the development and coherence in the parallel actions.
Through their keen understanding of dramatic storytelling,
these pages of Fables are easily on a par with the best of the
superhero genre.
If Fables 11: War
and Pieces provides a sense of closure, a feeling of
“so this is it”, the series achieves this not only because
writer Bill Willingham brings the strands of the narrative
arc to a denouement, because the balance which has been
disturbed when the Adversary conquered the Homelands has
been restored, but also because the main illustrator Mark
Buckingham achieves a peak of his visual storytelling in
these last issues.
Fables 11:
War and Pieces is
a meet ending to a story of epic proportions. Different
from all earlier trade paperbacks, it lacks a special cover
design by Fables’ cover artist James Jean, which is the
only major letdown of the volume. For new readers, it is
the worst place to start reading Fables. For followers of the series, it is a
splendid way to end the first story arc.
Fables
continues to be published.
