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This volume is all over the place. There is a Christmas interlude, we learn of Rapunzel’s plight, and a series of reader questions answered as 1-2 page comics. But the bulk of the volume is about the eye of the storm in the Fabletown and Adversary relations. Each has wreaked devastations upon the other and now Fabletown must see if their Israel Gambit will succeed. The volume is also about how warfare is also a battle about information. As far as Fabletown knows, Gepetto is OK with peace as he’s sent a diplomatic envoy. The reader, on the other hand, has seen Gepetto’s war council and that he prepares for total war. While Pinocchio is correct that the Fables and the Mundys would be swift with their retribution, the first punch will have already been thrown and the Mundy world would be worse off for it.

Fables Volumes 1 and 2 were pretty intense. The first volume has Bigsby Wolf solving the alleged murder of Snow White’s sister, Rose Red. The second volume involved an uprising by the non-human fables at The Farm. All of this wrapped up with an introduction to the world of Fables which, by the way, includes The Adversary taking over all their lands in an allegory of Hitler taking over Europe and appeasement leading to greater damage. So, while it was quite the tonal shift, it was not entirely surprising that the next volume starts with a fun-loving tale of Jack of the Fables. It turns out to only be a short respite from intense stories, but both the Jack story and the Briar Rose story function as palate cleansers while also serving to convey more of the backstory. In this sense, Bill Willingham has mastered storytelling from the very beginning of what would become a 150 issue series (plus spinoffs). I’ll return to the themes of these stories momentarily. The remainder of volume 3 involves Goldilocks, the chief agitator of the revolution on the farm, and Bluebeard attempting to murder Snow White and Bigsby. It then ends once again with a palate cleanser issue that deals with The Smurfette Problem among the Liliputians. Volume 4 opens up with Boy Blue recounting the story of the last set of refugees to make it from the fable lands to the real world. Again, Willingham both tells a poignant story that fits in with the refugee motif while also setting up the story of the rest of the volume. The majority of volume 4 involves an attack launched by the adversary and how the fables repulse it.

Here at Comic POW! because we’re not obsessed with reviews and are, instead, looking at greater themes within the works, we’re able to revisit older stories along with the newer stories. So this blog post kicks off a series focusing on Bill Willingham’s Fables. There has been a huge resurgence in interest in the stories of the Brothers Grimm. On one side we have Disney revisiting their animated films as live action films (as well as others leading to two Snow White films in one year). On the other side we have TV shows like Once Upon a Time and Grimm. But before the ABC show thought of what it would be like to have characters from our fables among us in the real world, Bill Willingham was telling a similar story nearly fifteen years ago.