Fables #6-10

Fables #6-10

Originally released in 2002

Written by Bill Willingham

Art by Mark Buckingham

I've been playing a lot of games by the company Telltale Games lately, which got me in the mood to give Fables (a series that they adapted into The Wolf Among Us) another try.  In the aftermath of the first five issues, Snow White is taking her sister Rose Red upstate to bring Colin, one of the Three Little Pigs, back to the Farm for community service.

The Farm is a place for Fables who can't pass as human.  It's a place of sanctuary that's magically protected to keep normal humans out, but for the Fables who live there, it's more like a prison.  There was a human Fable, Weyland Smith, running the place, but he... quit.  Under mysterious circumstances.  Nothing suspicious about that, or about the secretive townwide meetings held in a barn that Snow White stumbles upon.

While Snow White takes these events at face value, Rose understands that a revolution is brewing, and as the only humans on the Farm, they're in immediate danger.  This suspicion is proven correct - the animals are arming themselves (with Goldilocks as a ringleader), and Colin is executed by his fellow pigs for not accomplishing his task in Fabletown.

In a reference to Lord Of The Flies, Colin is decapitated with his head placed on his pike.  Goldilocks intended this as a reference and a warning; she's characterized here as a power-hungry revolutionary and would-be tyrant who commits acts of bestiality (mercifully off-screen), which is a far cry from her general portrayal.

Snow White flees, with Rose Red sympathizing with the revolutionary cause and joining them on the condition that Snow White isn't harmed or killed.  Snow White is given help by Reynard, a cunning fox who's against the revolution, and what follows is a tense chase scene as Snow is hunted by her fellow Fables who don't want word of their revolution leaving the Farm's boundaries.

The chase scene is well done; there's some humour from seeing a bear carrying around a gun, though some of the Farm's inhabitants, like Shere Khan from the Jungle Book, stick to their natural abilities while showing how unsettling and dangerous a tiger with human intelligence can be.

Following Reynard's directions, Snow finds three sleeping giants and a dragon, who were put under a spell to keep them asleep for centuries since they'd be impossible to hide from normal people otherwise.  She eventually makes her way to a cave, where she discovers Weyland Smith, who's been chained up, enchanted to obey every command of the Farm's inhabitants (and to not try to escape his chains), and forced to make weapons that the animals are capable of using.

As this is happening, a messenger bird is struck down in the process of leaving the Farm's borders.  Little Boy Blue finds out about this and tells Bigby, but as Bigby is banned from going to the Farm (he is the Big Bad Wolf, with all of the baggage that comes with that title), others are sent in his stead.

Rose convinces Goldilocks and the pigs to leave Snow White alive, and she is shackled in a similar manner to Weyland.  While Weyland can't free himself, there isn't a rule that he can't free others, and he finds a similar loophole to get himself free, even if Snow White doesn't figure it out for a while.

With Weynard freed and the giants and dragon awoken, the revolution is quickly put down, though in a last act of spite before escaping and leaving the other revolutionaries to their fates, Goldilocks uses a sniper rifle to shoot Snow White in the head, killing her instantly.

...except she wakes up in the hospital six weeks later.  As it turns out, as a Fable gets more well-known, they effectively become immortal as long as people are telling stories about them.  There are loopholes - the three giants volunteer to be transformed into normal-sized pigs to avoid being forced back into sleep, since as long as there are three little pigs, it doesn't matter which pigs they are - though it does raise some questions about other Fables who died and if they're actually dead.

The story arc was interesting, a mix of Animal Farm (or the Communist revolution) and Lord of the Flies. (the story ends with the narration describing Snow crying over Colin's demise in a way that's similar to the end of that novel)  After a long and bitter feud, Snow and Ruby reconcile, with Ruby becoming the new administrator of the Farm after her role in protecting Snow from the revolution comes to light. (Snow has a bad tendency to take things at face value, as she assumed that Ruby was a traitor and loyal to the revolutionary cause until Bigby spells it out for her)

As a series, Fables seems pretty flexible, with the first story arc being a murder mystery and the second being a tale of revolution, prejudice, and survival.  While there's an overarching villain (the mysterious Adversary who conquered the Fables' homelands and forced them to flee to New York), they're very much a background presence, with every couple of issues telling a self-contained story instead.  I'm curious if any normal humans will get involved (even if they'll likely be killed or have their memories wiped to maintain the secrecy of the Fable community), and what future stories will have to offer. (along with how much the characters will have changed from their original story, like Goldilocks, or remain unchanged by the passage of time, like Shere Khan)