Fables Vol. 8: Wolves | Bill Willingham | Big events dominate one of the best books in the series

Fables Vol. 8: Wolves | Bill Willingham | One of my favorite series - still loving it.

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Fables Vol. 8: Wolves

	Fables Vol. 8: Wolves Bill Willingham Vertigo, 2006 - 160 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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Big events dominate one of the best books in the series

Warning! Spoilers below!

This is one of my favorite books in the entire FABLES series. It is built around several major events. First, Mowgli continues his long and ultimately successful search for Bigby Wolf, partly because Prince Charming wants him to carry out a mission behind the Adversary's lines and partly to fulfill the requirements to allow the early release of Bagheera for his role in the farm uprising (see Book 2 in the series, ANIMAL FARM). Enlisting major allies in the cloud giants who inhabit a parallel dimension in the sky, Bigby is able to appear near the magic woods surrounding Gepetto's hut, completely destroying them and making it impossible for Gepetto to make new puppets for a few decades when the forest will regrow. Mission accomplished, Bigby and Snow White marry (old hokey ceremony and all, the kind of offensive one where the woman pledges to honor and obey and it concludes with them being named man and wife -- come on Bill! It is the 21st century, even the Fables would have junked that old dusty routine) and settle in the valley where the giants used to sleep. The book concludes with a diplomatic mission to the cloud giants by Cinderella to urge them to finally sign a mutual defense pact. Clearly, in the event of a major conflict, the Fabletown residents are going to need some major help. Having allies who are both giants and accomplished will surely help. But what of those who Cinderella inadvertently offended? Will that one day come back to haunt the Fables?

All in all, another spectacular addition to an outrageously fine series of graphic books.

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One of my favorite series - still loving it.

This is a welcome addition to the series. It was a little shorter than I would have liked but it left me satiated.

Yay!

My second favorite of the series so far. So much happens in book 8... Things readers have been waiting on since book 5 come about and there's romance and violence and politics and general badassery from my favorite characters. Can't wait to get the next one!

Return of the Big Bad Wolf - a feel-good story arc

Some minor SPOILERS, for Volume 8 and especially if you haven't so far read the preceding FABLES trades (and what's wrong with you that you haven't yet?).

Fans of FABLES and, more pointedly, of Snow White and Bigby Wolf are in for some fine reading. Since Snow and Bigby happen to be two of my most favorite characters in this series, the issues collected here in FABLES Vol. 8: WOLVES were something I'd particularly looked forward to. And for those who'd been on pins and needles regarding what's up with Snow and Bigby and their love story and their cute but impossible kids, well, the title of the 50th issue, "Happily Ever After," whispers a clue.

For those new to this remarkable, sometimes subversive comic book: Bill Willingham's modern-day twist is that the characters in all those classic fairy tales and stories from folklore and literature are alive and well and, having been driven out from their Homelands by the Adversary, are now hiding out in New York. Most of them live on a little residential street called Bullfinch (heh!), but those in the know call this community Fabletown. Those who can't pass for humans live on the Farm, Fabletown's isolated annex located in upstate New York.

Some catching up: Back in Fables Vol. 4: March of the Wooden Soldiers, Fabletown managed to fend off an attempted invasion by the Adversary's army of wooden soldiers. This naturally still doesn't sit too well with Fabletown's new mayor, Prince Charming. Charming hungers for retaliation, and his plans involve a secret mission in the heart of the Adversary's Empire. Except that the only one qualified to pull off this special ops, Bigby Wolf, has vanished.

Why Bigby took off is explained in Fables Vol. 5: The Mean Seasons. In this, Snow White, having given painful birth to seven cubs, is forced to relocate to the Farm, there to stay until the children learn to control their shapeshifting. What sucks is that their father, Bigby Wolf, is banned from ever setting foot on the Farm (Bigby was and is the Big Bad Wolf, so a lot of the Farm's sentient animals are rightfully wary of him). Bigby, in a tiff, skedaddles for parts unknown. His kids have never seen him.

So cut now to FABLES Vol. 8: WOLVES, this volume. Reprinting only issues #48-51, this is one of the shortest FABLES trades out there, but since it marks the return of Bigby Wolf, consider me assuaged. Issues #48 & 49 mostly intersperse Mowgli's sometimes harrowing year-long search for Bigby with goings-on at the Farm, and specifically with how the cubs are faring. All that is a set up for the big 50th issue, which treats us to Bigby's perilous mission in the Homelands, then a homecoming and a reunion. And the kids get to meet their dad for the first time, and there's a resolution to the whole Bigby-Wolf-shan't-be-in-the-Farm-like-ever! quandary.

Finally, issue #51 focuses on Cinderella, one of Fabletown's most capable Tourists (Tourists, by the way, are Fabletown's agents sent out to the mundane world to keep tabs on fables living abroad). Cinderella undertakes a diplomatic assignment up the giant beanstalk and in the cloud kingdoms. Cinderella, who prefers a dash of skullduggery in her missions, really doesn't have a good time with this one. But the reader might.

So I'm done talking up Bill Willingham (mostly 'cause it's getting hard coming up with new ways to praise the dude). I'll settle this time for saying only that the man can write like the dickens, and that his cast of fables makes up some of the most involving, three-dimensional characters I've ever read in comics. And that artists Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha continue to really bring Willingham's stories to life. And we all know that James Jean's covers are wicked cool.

For the completist in you, this trade also offers a map of Fabletown and of the Farm, as well as the entire script to issue #50. And, oh, did the invisible seventh child ever find his dad? Well, yes.

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The story continues and grows

Willingham and crew continue to do a great job with this entertaining and imaginative series. For those of you who came in late: fairy tale characters are real - and living in exile in New York. War has driven them from their homelands, and inner divisions have threatened their secretive society in our mundane world.

The story moves smoothly, with all the things that a long-lived series needs: old threads to wind down, new ones to explore, and continuity to pull us along. The old involves Bigby wolf, living in self-imposed exile. It turns out that his unique skills can help Fabletown in a daring counter-attack against the nearly-unstoppable opponents. A year-long search ends his absence and, at the same time, starts a new phase in the ongoing war. Another new element arises near the end of this collection, when emissaries form a tottery alliance with the cloud kingdom at the top of Jack's beanstalk. Continuity comes from Jack's family, the charming litter of six-plus-one children and their mother, Snow White, and their new life together.

I recommend that you read these books in order. Collections 1 through 7 set the background of events and characters taken for granted in this, the eighth. I really just recommend that you read them, though. The series sustains its energy well and, even more than at the beginning, I really want to follow the lives of these wonderful characters.

-- wiredweird

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