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Reconstruction of the
Fables
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Fables:
Legends in Exile
Bill Willingham (writer); Lan Medina, Steve Leialoha,
Craig Hamilton (artists)
Vertigo/DC, 2003
Rating: 3.6
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Posted:
January
5, 2003
By
Kevin Forest Moreau
Veteran fringe comics writer/artist Bill Willingham is making something of a
career out of the fusion of classic fantasy and contemporary sensibilities. This
trend began with the "adult" fantasy title Ironwood, for Fantagraphics'
porn line Eros, which was basically eleven issues of graphic sex in a standard
fantasy-world setting. That approach was inverted a bit for Frantagraphics'
short-lived Coventry, which posited a modern-day world occasionally beset
by fantasy-tinged problems such as monsters and curses. With the dissolution of
Coventry due to financial difficulties, Willingham has more or less taken
the skeletal structure of that series -- a world of folklore and legend
superimposed over our own -- to the better-paying Vertigo line. Fables,
the resulting comic, crystallizes the core elements of his earlier fusions to
the conceit's logical conclusion: classic fantasy characters stranded in our
modern world.
The premise is disarmingly simple. As the result of a relentless invasion by a
mysterious figure referred to only as The Adversary, characters from many of our
most enduring childhood myths, fables and nursery rhymes -- Snow White, Prince
Charming, etc., -- were driven from their various homelands, and have banded
together in exile in the present, waiting for the day when they can confront The
Adversary and return to their homes. Fabletown, as this makeshift community is
known, resides in a luxury apartment building in New York City, where the exiles
do their best to fit in and bide their time.
Unfortunately for Legends in Exile, which collects the first five-issue
arc of the ongoing series, that's about where the "fantasy" quotient ends. The
storyline that drives Legends in Exile is ground almost entirely not just
in the modern world, but in modern-day storytelling conventions, concerning as
it does the murder of Rose Red, sister of Snow White (Fabletown's "Director of
Operations," deputy mayor to Old King Cole and the real power behind the throne,
and portrayed here as a stern, all-business martinet). The investigation falls
to Fabletown's lone resident "sheriff," Bigby Wolf -- formerly the Big Bad Wolf,
whose offenses against mythic citizens like Red Riding Hood and the Three Little
Pigs were forgiven as part of a general amnesty agreement among the exiled
fables. Bigby's surprising skill at his new job proves Willingham's most
intriguing twist, and one that -- in this storyline, at least -- is given
disappointingly short shrift.
Bigby's primary suspects are Rose's boyfriend Jack (of beanstalk and
Giant-Killer fame) and notorious wife killer Bluebeard, who dated Rose during a
temporary split with Jack and reveals that they were secretly engaged. To his
credit, Willingham concocts a surprisingly cohesive and credible murder mystery
from these ingredients; Bigby's "parlor room scene" deconstruction of the crime
clicks with all of the assurance and surprises of a first-rate mystery.
Willingham also capably employs Bigby's investigation as a means of introducing
us to various characters, with others popping up on the sidelines. But by virtue
of the tale's finite length, many of these characters remain only intriguing
glimpses -- especially Prince Charming, whom readers meet early on as a
manipulative ladies' man slumming in New York after having "burned...bridges
with every royal in Europe," but who's reduced to a mere plot device as the
drama unfolds. But that's the inherent nature of whodunits, even those as
skillfully executed as this one: characters run the risk of serving as little
more than ways for advancing the plot from point A to point B.
And that's the main problem with Legends in Exile. While its plot-driven
story does allow the reader some glimpses into the day-to-day workings of
Willingham's intriguing tableau, the murder mystery proves an ill fit with
Fables' rich premise. With a few modifications, his whodunit could easily
work on its own without any backstory involving fairy tale heroes and villains.
And that fact does Fables a disservice, as its central conceit serves as
little more than fancy window dressing for a by-the-numbers, if sturdy and
well-crafted, mystery. Even the (admittedly competent) artwork of penciler Lan
Medina and inkers Steve Leialoha and Craig Hamilton emphasizes the modern at the
expense of the fantastic.
As a means of introducing readers to Willingham's characters and history,
Legends in Exile can be regarded as a workmanlike success. But as a true
melding of the legendary and the contemporary, it falls flat. One is willing to
cut Willingham some slack, allowing for the fact that there's plenty of time for
Fables to grow into its fantastical potential. But the lack of any heroic
quests, epic battles or even star-crossed love stories renders Legends in
Exile merely a clever conceit, a hollow echo of Fables' inherent
promise.
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