One Empty Space: The Art of Kevin Ward

Rereading Fables: Vol 2, Animal Farm

For those joining us… at all really. ‘Rereading Fables’ is my discussion of each trade of the Fables series published by Vertigo comics.

I have completed the second volume of Fables, Animal Farm. These early volumes are especially short. Spoilers to follow.

Fables: Vol. 2, Animal Farm
Writer: Bill Willingham
Penciler: Mark Buckingham
Inker: Steve Leialoha
Colorist: Daniel Vozo
Letterer: Todd Kleinn
Covers: James Jean
Issues: 6-10
Price: $12.95

In this story, we take a trip to the more absurd area of the Fables world: the Farm. This is where all of the Fables who cannot pas as human live. And they are not allowed to leave. It is this that spurs them to rebel against the Fable government in an attempt to return to the Homelands and push back the Adversary.

I’m going to start by discussing the art this time. Here is the first appearance of our ‘regular’ series artist. And this is where we start to see the style of art that is typical of this book for me. It anchors the Fables in the real world, but it doesn’t hold so much to the need to be realistic that the shadows can’t be awkwardly placed or the faces a little out of proportion. These are still characters that we can take seriously, but they have a quality to their appearance that betrays their fantastic nature. At the same time, the animal Fables, specifically the pigs and bears, have faces that portray emotion without being cartoons. It is a rare artist that can pull this off, but Buckingham does.

And it is needed for this story. Legends in Exile had the task of making us believe that fairy tale characters can exist in New York. This volume has the task of making us believe that talking pigs, tigers, and bears can exist in upstate New York and form a functional, hidden society. Willingham does this with his plot and continued world building, but I’m not sure we would have cared as much without Buckingham’s pencils. The look on Colin’s face when he is turned into the Lord of the Flies has such impact not because of the level of gory detail (it’s carried out more respectfully than most comic book deaths) but rather because of the shadows and expression.

The plot of this arc focuses on an uprising at the Farm. Snow White and Rose Red take a routine trip to check on the Farm and stumble into the rebellion. Over the course of the story, we find out that the rebellion has been taken over, if not started by, Goldilocks as a way for her to gain control of the Fable community and ensure that the Farm residents are treated as equals to those of the City residents. Rose ‘joins’ the rebels to preserve her and Snow’s life while Snow joins up with the dissenting voice of the Farm population. They put down the rebellion with the help of the sleeping giants and a dragon. Snow White is shot and survives only because of her popularity in the mundane world. The ringleaders of the rebellion are executed and Goldilocks escapes.

It is one of these last points that most interests me. The fact that Snow survives due to her popularity among the Mundies (us). This makes for an interesting idea. Those that are present in Pop Culture are damned near immortal (Snow White, Goldilocks, the Big Bad Wolf, etc) those that aren’t are very killable (Rose, Bluebeard, Cock Robin). This adds an interesting dynamic to the mix. In the case of the rebellion, those that were most likely to survive no matter the result are spearheading it. But they can be replaced. This is seen with the three little pigs. THe mundane world needs their existence, but they don’t have to be Dun, Posey, and Colin. This makes it a slight bit more dangerous to be a more ‘annonymous’ Fable.

Goldilocks, of course, doesn’t have the anonymity problem. She is the only person that can be her in the story. This would make her more likely to take risks, so she is a logical choice to lead a violent revolution. Her relationship with animals makes her political stance likely, as well. What intrigues me most is that this is one of the few times we ever see Willingham’s political beliefs peek through and it is in no way detrimental to the story. The portrayl of Goldilocks pokes fun at many liberal PC movements. However, it also fits into the story and creates a compelling mouthpiece to show the extreme side of a real problem in the Fables world and because of this, shows the absurditiy of militants more than anything else.

And it is her approach to ‘solving’ the equality issue that brings up the central cautionary issue. After all, an arc called Animal Farm would just seem incomplete if it didn’t caution against a political action. In this case following a passionate leader in an unquestioning manner. The pigs may have started off innocently enough, but they traded one human looking leader for another. This was one of their issues, but given the chance to rectify it, they gave control to Goldilocks, with her charismatic personality. This probably has something to do with it being published soon after 9/11. The interesting thing is, that it shows the difficulty of government and warns against destroying the imperfect system as well. We are cautioned to choose who we follow and encouraged to work within the system.

This arc does further our understanding of the characters. We see Rose Red as being more street smart in her ability to trick the rebels. At the same time, she begins taking rebonsibility that she is not known for in two actions: dumping Jack and taking over the Farm. We see Snow losing her naiveté that being the prototypical good girl gives her. She sees the eventual war and she sees that the system she embraces is not helping everyone equally. These two are our primary characters and there relationship is complicated by the attempted killing of SNow. It is interesting to see the jealousy over a popularity that actually matters. Bigby, Bluebeard, and Prince Charming all keep to the background. But we do have Boy Blue coming somewhat out of the shadows and the introduction of the Wayward Knight. His prophecies seem to predict the farm and something more later on down the road.

That coming war takes more of a forefront in our minds with Snow’s request to Weyland Smith as well. She sees preparation for war as a necessary action. The Fables need to maintain what they have, but prepare to take back what they lost at the same time. But we get no further hints about the Homelands. After all, it is an interesting consideration that if Snow White can take a bullet to the head, that other Fables that did not make it out could have taken much more.

Until Vol 3, Story Book Love.

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Rereading Fables: Vol. 1, Legends in Exile

I bought the tenth trade of Fables yesterday and sat down to read it, only to realize that in the year and a half to two years since I last read the series, I had forgotten most of the backstory. As such, I figured it was time to reread them.

I’ve also seen quite a few people chronicling their rereads, thus I am inspired to do the same. The most common of these seems to be Watchmen, one issue at a time, at the moment. The most amazing is Cerebus, being done in its entirety (300 issues), one issue a day. I don’t have the patience to do a one issue a day deal, so I’m doing a one trade whenever I finish it deal.

And I have finished my reread of Legends in Exile. Be warned, there are spoilers from here on.

Fables: Legends in Exile
Writer: Bill Willingham
Penciler: Lan Medina
Inkers: Steve Leiloha and Craig Hamilton
Colorist: Sherilyn van Valkenburgh
Letter: Todd Klein
Covers: James Jean and Alex Maleev
Issues: 1-5
Price: $9.95

This first story arc is a murder mystery. When I first read it, I was struck by how good an idea it was to use a murder mystery to set up an ensemble cast. You get introduced to the world and the tensions between characters. It still works incredibly well. But it does seem a little flat knowing what comes after. That said, its still far better than most of what is out there.

Bill Willingham faces an interesting challenge with this series. He has to take the high concept of ‘Fairy tale characters live in New York’ and make it not seem contrived. He also has to give us characters with more dimension than fairy tale/ Disney movies give us.

He is very successful at the first. Our opening scene, Snow White dealing with government issues concerning Beauty and the Beast, sets up the world in a very easy conversation. It is here that we learn that the Fables (those fairy tale characters) are living in secret. They have their own government and policies to keep them from being discovered. Their most important law is that no Fable will do anything to reveal their existence. We also learn why they are here. They were chased from their kingdoms by an invading army centuries previous. This is referenced throughout, but it is not the main plot, yet. This is the background. This is the reasoning on which our suspension of disbelief relies. This is our world, with one minor change that we could, potentially, not notice.

On the second point, he is less successful. The characters still feel largely archetypal, with a few exceptions. That said, he is setting up a large cast. Those few characters he does focus on long enough feel fleshed out and the ones he spends only a short time on are given enough hooks to keep us interested in them. I am disappointed, however, that we do not learn more about our murder ‘victim’ in this volume. But I’ll get to that later.

One of the firs things I noticed when I opened this volume was the difference in art styles from the later books. Lan Medina had a good solid style, but it is different in both the use of line and the panel flow. His line work has much more of a rough edge to it than that of Mark Buckingham, the regular series artist after this point. His art serves to ground the story in our world, in that it has a more realistic feel to it. This helps in buying the concept as serious. But, as unfair as it is to compare him to the artist who defines the series for me, his style simply doesn’t allow me to buy the fantastical quality of the book at this point.

As I said before, the story focuses on a murder mystery (last chance to leave if you haven’t read the arc) that centers on the supposed death of Rose Red, the sister of Snow White, as investigated by Bigby Wolf. I find these character choices an interesting starting point for the series. I didn’t know who Rose Red was before coming into this series. I haven’t read the original Hans Christian Andersen tales. I think that presenting the less known character in the story as having been killed is an interesting one. Rose Red is not part of the pop culture hive-mind that Snow White is. She has effectively been killed by the disney movie. The difference in tone is also noted in the reference to the Seven Dwarves on pages 12 and 13. To those of us that don’t know of the evil dwarves of the tales, this exchange seems like it’s purpose is simply to make the Disney tale more ‘mature,’ however it is to illuminate the differences between the pop culture versions of these characters and the ‘real’ versions from the tales.

This is why I am disappointed with the lack of information about either of the two sisters. Seeing Snow White say fuck and in a position of power separates her from the Disney tale, but little else does. I suppose the purpose of the character treatment in this first volume is to introduce them to us both as the original characters from the tales, rather than the Disney caricatures, and to extend those characters into the modern world. We see Snow as the responsible sister and Rose as the wild child. Bigby is every big bad wolf. Prince Charming is every prince charming (which creates a good tension point for the future and illuminates the similarities in archetypal characters from tale to tale).

It is also interesting to note that all of these characters come from folk tales. And as far as I can tell, he hasn’t wavered from this. It would be relatively easy for Willingham to pull public domain pop culture characters in, but he only uses these traditional folk characters. It is just as broad a character base as League of Extraordinary Gentleman‘s initiative to only use literary characters of an era, but a bit better defined. We have a nearly limitless cast, but we know who won’t be popping up. No Frankensteins or Draculas. No gods.

The plot itself is simple. It’s purpose is to get us more interested in the world than anything else. We are introduced to a wide array of characters through the investigation and their individual situations. We see Bigby and Snow investigate and use their eyes to see everyone else. They are the main characters of this very pulp detective tale. And this detective tale ends in a manor befitting its pulp status, a parlour room scene. It is contrived, but it works well for a fairy tale murder mystery. And it, in and of itself, says more about Jack and Rose than the rest of the arc. It shows how naive both of them are in their risk taking. It serves as a platform on which to build both characters.

In the end, we are also left with a lot of tension after the big reveal that Rose and Jack faked Rose’s murder to get away from marriage to Bluebeard. As Bigby said, Snow found a solution to the problem of resolving this mess that ensures that no one will be happy. Now we have conflict to move forward with that has nothing to due with the mythic Adversary who many other writers would immediately gear a series towards dealing with. This story makes certain the reader knows that it is about the lives of the characters, not their inevitable war.

And war is inevitable. Bluebeard’s training session and Prince Charming’s auction show us this. These people want their lands back. That is the hope that drives them. They exist here in our world, but their lives are built around the need to be back home.

So it seems fitting, that at the very end we are treated with two views of the Homelands. The first is in King Cole’s speech. Here we see the terror from which the Fables fled. The second is a short story that shows why Bigby was allowed to live among the Fables, even though he is the most brutal of killers. It is this redemptive story that sets a tone for the series to pick up a few years down the line. The Fables bound together because their way of life changed drastically, as King Cole said. But they resisted as well, for their own reasons. They did not simply flee. And because of this, the most reprehensible of killers was redeemed. We are introduced to more throughout the series (the other illustration of this is the old witch that killed Hansel and Grettle).

After the story concludes, we are left looking back and seeing that our most well developed characters are Snow and Bigby. And we have the hopeless romance of Bigby pursuing Snow, who still hasn’t let go of her bitterness towards prince Charming’s betrayal. What will happen to these two next? We will see in Vol 2, Animal Farm whenever I finish it.

I would be remiss, however, if I concluded this without mentioning the covers. I may do an entire entry on them once I get the James Jean Art of Fables book, but I will start here. These covers set that fantastical tone that Medina’s art couldn’t. In these covers we see the characters as fairytales. I also find it interesting that Alex Maleev provided a cover for the first issue. His style makes the series seem more gritty than it ever really gets. I guess they wanted people to know it would be a detective story at first.

Anyway, until Animal Farm…

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Price

Since I’ve been living in Charlottesville, I’ve been listening to the radio rather than the iPod. We actually have a good station here. Anyway, this means that I’m plugged into local advertisements in a way I haven’t been in a few years. Recently one of these ads has caught my attention.

There is a car dealership in town named Price Kia. They have one of the most annoying jingles ever and, because of this, they became the one commercial that I could identify in the first second of broadcast and turn off. Their latest ad doesn’t feature the jingle prominently. No, its subject is much to important to drive people away. Its subject is gambling. On the part of the company itself more than the listener.

They discuss how, in these uncertain economic times, you, the consumer, might not want to buy a car. They give three very good reasons not to, in fact. No credit, fear of being fired, and something else which I cannot remember at the moment. They then dismiss them with a simple no problem. You see, they will get you approved. The optimistic tone suggests that it doesn’t matter if you’re paying of five credit cards onto each other and have bounced every check you’ve ever looked at, they’re behind you. This is a normal advertising ploy and of no surprise, but I will return to it. What is interesting to me is the solution to job loss. If you lose your job, they assure you, they will make your car payment for three months while you look for a new job.

This intrigues me. We are heading for something worse before anything better, and they are banking on the fact that they will not have to make these payments. They are hurting so badly that they are willing to risk huge loss. And Price Chrysler is doing the same. Seeing as they are owned by the same people, I’m not surprised by this point.

Up in the Northern Virginia area, one of the dealerships is getting people to buy with a different gamble, but a more honest one in my opinion. They are offering to let you return the car if you lose your job. Here you see the gamble that the dealership will not be stuck with old stock, but if they are, they can unload the cars on the used market afterwards. They out property, but rather only money. And they are seen as good guys. No repossession.

This is what Price seems to lack. What happens when the buyer looses his job and can’t find anything that will allow for those car payments in three months? It took me four months of hard searching to find something better than Starbucks in this town. Granted, my college graduate lack of experience factor helped that, but the situation is only getting worse. SO my car gets repossessed and I’m out x amount of payments.

And what I find interesting is the fact that there are more big purchase initiatives here. More buy on credit initiatives. Place the thought of ‘Bad Credit? No Problem!’ back in your mind. There is another ad running around assuring the citizens of Charlottesville and Albermarle that they can get financing to buy a home. It doesn’t matter what the news says about the markets in other areas, ours is a solid one. Ours is one that still has the possibility for you to won a home. Not only that, but its a good time to buy.

And to some extent it is true. Virginia historically lags behind the rest of the country on the economic crisis front. The rest of the country is well on its way to sliding down the toilet while we’re still on the rim for a while. But we are feeling it now. Charlottesville lags behind the rest of Virginia. But yet there are very few jobs and a large influx of people coming in to one of the ‘Top Places to Live in the Country.’

So Charlottesville is trying to prevent they’re economy from dying by encouraging spending. Just like the rest of the country.

And I see how much this would help at my job. If we were getting more orders, I would be on full time. I would have more money. I would spend more money. And I would know that I was going to still be receiving money a month, two months, six months from now.

But thats just it. I won’t spend as much money because of two things: a lack of it and a fear that there isn’t going to be any more of it. And because of this, the comic shop and the video game shop and the grocery store and the restaurants can’t hire as many people. And those people can’t order my product.

But the guys working at Price can. If their gamble pays off. If it doesn’t, what happens to their business, their employees, and their spending habits?

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This has been a look at the economy by someone not trained in it. I am probably making incorrect assumptions, but that show it goes. Correct them, debate them, enlighten me.

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