REVIEW: Fables Vol.1: Legends In Exile by Bill Willingham and Illustrated by Lan Medina

Fables: Leg­ends in Exile (2002) writ­ten by Bill Will­ing­ham and Illus­trated by Lan Med­ina is avail­able in paper­back, pub­lished by Ver­tigo and retails for $9.99 US.

This is an ongo­ing series fea­tur­ing fairy tale char­ac­ters who find them­selves uprooted from their fairy realm and liv­ing in secret exile in upstate New York.

Do you enjoy fairy tales? You know, Snow White and the seven dwarf’s? Or Beauty and the Beast? Or how about Cin­derella? Make no mis­take, Willingham’s ren­di­tion of the fables is for adults only. It seems innocu­ous at first glance, with all the pretty pics of fairy tale crea­tures on the cover but it is a comic for adults.

Where to begin? Well, as the title sug­gests and as I men­tioned above, the fables are in exile and have made New York their tem­po­rary home. The fables “king­doms and lands” were taken by some­one who only goes by the name of “the adver­sary.” After they’ve been forced out of their home, they travel to our world in the hopes that the “adver­sary” will not fol­low. They set up a secret fable gov­ern­ment slash soci­ety where King Cole is mayor and Snow White is his deputy mayor (who does most of the work behind the scenes).

All non­hu­man fables who can’t blend into human soci­ety must live on the Farm, which is located in upstate New York. You have Fable­town in the city and then you have the Farm. Since being relo­cated from their home­land, many of the fables are faced with the social and eco­nom­i­cal issues that plague the rest of us. Many of the fables were forced to leave much of their fortune’s behind.

As the story opens, Beauty and her hus­band, Beast are hav­ing mar­i­tal issues that has insti­gated her husband’s curse. He looks like well, like a beast, and that’s not good. Act­ing as a mar­riage coun­seler, Snow White informs the cou­ple that he must hide his “beastly fea­tures” with glam­our or move to the Farm where the rest of the non­hu­man fables reside.

Every year the fables have “Remem­brance Day” where they pay homage to their past and col­lect dona­tions to help sup­port their secret com­mu­nity. Amnesty has been given to ensure a clean slate and rules must be obeyed to make sure that humans remain obliv­i­ous to their exis­tence in the city.

Fables: Leg­ends in Exile is a char­ac­ter dri­ven story as there’s not much action in it. Many of the fables we’ve enjoyed as kids are intro­duced and are given a mod­ern touch. Will­ing­ham has essen­tially taken our beloved fairy tale char­ac­ters and breathed new life into them. Take for instance, Snow White. She runs Fable­town almost sin­gle hand­edly by her­self. She’s smart, devoted to her job and has plenty of atti­tude to spare. She doesn’t mince words.

Then there’s the Big, Bad Wolf who goes by Bigby Wolf. He’s refrained from blow­ing down houses and is now sher­iff of Fable­town. Decked out in sheep’s cloth­ing, he has to inves­ti­gate the dis­ap­pear­ance of Snow White’s estranged sis­ter, Red Rose. I can’t say that the mys­tery was all that dif­fi­cult to solve but it was fun watch­ing it unfold. He and Snow White work together and inter­ro­gate other “leg­ends” like Blue­beard and Jack with his miss­ing magic beans, among others.

There are other prin­ci­pal play­ers like Prince Charm­ing who is a free load­ing nar­cis­sist, who added plenty of humor and fla­vor. I espe­cially enjoyed the barbs that flew between he and his ex-wife. The pages rel­a­tively flew by quickly in this first vol­ume and I’ve already started on the second.

I’d bought these two vol­umes last year but never got around to read­ing them. As I was re-organizing my book­shelf, I had started to put them in a box for stor­age, but then I started to read the first few pages and was imme­di­ately hooked. The art­work is well done and I espe­cially enjoyed see­ing the emo­tional expres­sions of the char­ac­ters done so accu­rately. Snow White was hands down my favorite fairy tale char­ac­ter in here. She can hold her own, doesn’t take lip and can dole out the insults (espe­cially with her ex) with the best of them.

Other fairy tale char­ac­ters apart from the main cast for this first story arc include Jack, Red Rose (in spirit), Blue­beard, Cin­derella and Beauty and the Beast, among oth­ers. Fables: Leg­ends in Exile was a blast to read and I look for­ward to read­ing more of these sto­ries. My grade, B+.

*****

This post is apart of TBR Day Chal­lenge where read­ers explore their TBR piles in search of those “buried” trea­sure reads that they never knew they owned. [g] Please visit the other read­ers of this chal­lenge and enjoy.

For Fur­ther Reading

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• Reviews Of Two Note­wor­thy Graphic Novel(s)
• REVIEW: ‘The Dream­ing’ Writ­ten & Illus­trated by Quee­nie Chan
• REVIEW: ‘Token’ Writ­ten by Alisa Kwit­ney and Illus­trated by Joëlle Jones
• REVIEW: ‘Kin (The Good Neigh­bors)’ by Holly Black and Illus­trated by Ted Naifeh
• REVIEW: Vagabond, Story & Art by Take­hiko Inoue
• REVIEW:The End of the Rela­tion­ship: Short­com­ings, Adrian Tomine
• REVIEW: Human Tar­get by Peter Mil­li­gan, Edvin Biuković
• REVIEW:The Arrival, Illus­trated by Shaun Tan
• REVIEW: 30 Days of Night by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith