100 by 30 Book 18 - Fables

Fables, vol. 5-7 by Bill Willingham

Fables is one of the best Comic book series I've ever read. Seriously, just go to the bookstore or library, grab volume 1 and thank me later. If you don't know, Fables is about a group of your favorite fairy tale characters secretly living in New York. Turns out they are refugees from their homelands, which have been over taken by a mysterious adversary. The stories take on a noir style, led by the sheriff, who is the big bad wolf. Oh, and the popularity of the characters in our world directly relates to how easy they are to kill. So Snow White can get her brains blown out and splattered across the page and she will slowly, painfully recover. So little kids will love these books.

Anyway, Fast forwarding to vol. 5 Fabletown has just survived an attack by the Adversaries forces, Snow White is pregnant, and there is going to be an election. We also get a great story of the Big Bad Wolf's time during world war II. Seeing as this volume follows a major event, most of this boo is fallout from the previous one, so It's not a great way to start.

Vol. 6, however, is awesome. We get to see Boy Blue head to the Homelands. He's good at two things, kicking ass and chewing bubble gum....and playing the trumpet. THREE things, he's good at three things... It's late and I don't remember how jokes work....So he sneaks into the homelands and, using some super awesome magic stuff, kills everything and everyone who gets in his way until he gets to the adversary, and....we finally learn who the big bad really is! I'll give you a hint, you've heard of them, and I've made disparaging remarks about him/her in a previous blog post about Disney movies. Meanwhile, back in Fabletown, Prince Charming has become mayor and he and his new staff are adjusting to their new jobs. It's actually a nice bit of character development. We get to see woefully unqualified people actually learning and improving. It's like the opposite of what happens in Game of Thrones.

In Vol.7, the Arabian fairytale world is under attack, and Sinbad is sent with a delegation to meet with Fabletown. Oh, and they bring a D'jinn in a bottle, which is basically the magical equivalent of a WMD. It's an interesting spin on Middle Eastern relations, and the problem of how to stop a D'jinn is solved in a really neat way.

So yeah, these books are great, you should check them out.

9/10