Fables 1: Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham

Fables 1: Legends in Exile
by Bill Willingham [YA PB (Graphic Novel) Willingham] 

Ever wonder what happened to the Big Bad Wolf, Snow White, Goldilocks, Little Boy Blue and the other characters from classic fables? Well, it turns out that they were driven out of their Fable worlds into ours centuries ago by who or what is only referred to as the adversary. They don’t age and it’s difficult for them to die so long as humans continue telling their tales. They have set up a Fabletown in the midst of a large city and this graphic novel series tell of their present and bit of their past. There are a couple of stories in this book. Legends in Exile is the longest and it’s basically a murder mystery. The sister of Snow White, Rose Red, goes missing, her apartment is ransacked and there’s blood everywhere. Bigby, the Big Bad Wolf in human form (as an enchantment), plays detective. It was set up like a classic mystery story even with the get together at the end where the murderer is revealed in front of everyone involved. The next story is much shorter and is actually a prose story about Bigby, called A Wolf in the Fold. It tells of the wolf back in the homelands when people were fleeing for the human world, and a few centuries later after he passed into our world and was brought out of the wilderness into Fabeltown and gained his enchantment to look like a human. The last story is, The Price of a Happy Ending. It’s also set in the homelands during the struggle against the adversary and involved Little Bo Peep. Over all this is a really well written series. There is a lot of character development and a lot of secrets of the past to be revealed at the series continues. I highly recommend it as it’s full of adventure, surprise, mystery and a cast of familiar but new characters. I also like that the white space between the comic frames will change color or pattern depending on what’s happening in the story – I thought this was a nice touch that added a lot to the reading experience. If you prefer e-books then you can also check this out online with Hoopla Digital either in a browser or the app.

[If you enjoy this, almost all the rest of the series is on Hoopla. At the moment they have up to volume 21 out of the 22. One last note is that these stories were published in the volumes reviewed here and as deluxe volumes, which are hardback and longer, so there are only 14 of them. The stories line up fairly evenly but sometimes the shorter ones get shuffled around a bit differently in the different volume lines. Originally they came out as comic books, not graphic novels, so you could go that route too if you wanted.]

[ official Fables web page on the Vertigo comics site ] | [ official Bill Willingham web site ]

Recommended by Kristen A.
Gere Branch Library

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