Title: Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile
Author(s) Name(s): Bill Willingham
Published in: December, 2002
Why You Might Like This Book: Read this book if you enjoy
- adult comics,
- DC Comics,
- fantasy fiction,
- whodunit murder mysteries,
- fairytales and folklore,
- magic,
- fast-paced crime fiction,
- short fiction,
- revenge and motivation for crime, and
- detective stories.
Who Should Avoid This Book: Avoid this book if you are triggered by or dislike
- murder,
- death,
- slurs and cuss words,
- explicit sex talk,
- mythological evil, and
- violence.
Fables is a series of comics created by Bill Willingham and published by Vertigo Comics, a series of comics that fall under the DC Comics brand name. Unlike the typical DC comics, in these books, there won’t be any superheroes or supervillains. Instead, the creator and writer of Fables reimagines characters from fables and tales most of us would have heard of during our childhood days to be powerful characters aka “fables” living in disguise among the normal people in New York in the present times. They have built a community for themselves called “Fabletown” and those fables who can convincingly pretend to be normal human beings live here, leading double lives, but those who can’t hide their true selves from human beings aka “mundys” or the mundane people would have to go live in the farm.
The popular fairytale characters we know of take up different characters here and these stories are no longer for children. For instance, “Snow White” serves as the assistant for the mayor of the underground fable government, she hires “Bigby”, that is the “Big Bad Wolf” as the Sheriff, “Jack” – a name that reminds us of many characters from our school days plays a con-man, and “Prince Charming” is handsome, manipulative man who is broke and exploits others with his charm.
One morning, Jack rushes into Bigby’s office to complain that when he opened his girlfriend’s (Rose Red) apartment door, the whole place was filled with blood splatters everywhere and the furniture was mostly destroyed and there was a sign painted in blood on a wall saying, “No More Happily Ever After”. Rose Red is Snow White’s sister. Rose was known to be the wild, partying kind, and her apartment would often be filled with party people, the mundys and the fables. Rumours start spreading within the community and Snow White takes the help of Bigby officially to find her sister.
Bigby, with his powers of both a man and a wolf, makes a good investigator. He arrives at the scene, studies the crime scene, and makes a list of suspects he’d question and interview. Snow desperately wants to know if her sister is alive or dead, even though she’s been estranged with and not in touch with her sister for years now because Rose and Snow’s ex Prince Charming were having an affair and Snow caught them cheating on her. She, like many others, has several questions: who could have done this to Rose? Where is Rose now? Is the culprit a fable or a mundy? She insists that she be made a part of the investigation.
Bigby has a few suspects: Jack, Rose’s boyfriend because they were caught fighting publicly a year ago, after which they broke up, Bluebeard, possibly the richest man in Fabletown, who has a history of killing his wives, and Snow herself, if she could have been motivated by either jealousy or revenge. His investigation begins and this becomes a whodunit murder case. All the three of them are shocked when he accuses them but Bigby has his own ways to get them to admit things or at least talk to him honestly.
Finally, Bigby puts together different clues and solves the case, explaining the who, what, how, and why to all the residents of Fabletown. The illustrations by Mark Buckingham are good and the first half is somewhat interesting, but the story slows down in the latter half, as if it were meant for kids, and it’s not a book recommended for children if you wouldn’t want them to read about cuss words, sex talk, and affairs! Only if the plot were better, the book could have definitely been more interesting. Still, it is a fast-paced, interesting graphic novel that you can finish reading in an hour or less.
