Trade Waiting Retrospective: Fables

Fables by Bill Willingham

Words cannot adequately express my love for Bill Willingham’s Fables.  I have read the eleven available trades, the special edition book of side stories, and four trades of its spin-off, Jack of Fables, and I find myself incredibly depressed to learn that it will be months before I get another volume.  In recent years, fairy tales have made a comeback in popular literature.  Gregory Maguire has launched a career reworking classic fairy tales, and other authors are following suit.  I even took a college course devoted entirely to fairy tales.  While I hope that this resurgence in interest in classic children’s stories doesn’t become overdone, I’m loving it while its still fun and Fables is one of the funnest comics I’ve ever read.

Fables presents a world where fairy tale characters live in a specific neighborhood in New York City known as Fabletown.  Those characters that can’t pass as human (such as the Three Little Pigs) are forced to live on the Farm, Fabletown’s massive farm in upstate New York.  The series stars an ensemble cast that are slowly introduced over the first few trades, as are bits of backstory and history.  The Fables have been driven from their Homelands by a mysterious and all-powerful Adversary.  The different arcs present the overall goal of all characters, which is to return to the Homelands, and while numerous characters are presented, a few strong leaders present themselves.  Snow White is the deputy mayor of Fabletown, the Big Bad Wolf (now Bigby) is sherrif, Prince Charming is seeking to become the new mayor, Boy Blue is the town’s main errand runner, and Snow’s estranged sister Rose Red is the leader of the Farm.

Fairy tales all follow a pretty standard formula.  There are only a few characters, with very few actually being given names.  There’s the good girl, there is the wicked girl (or stepmother), and a trickster figure somewhere in between.  Most male and female fairy tale characters fall into one of these catagories.  Something traumatic happens, typically with the nice character being victimized by the bad character, the good character flees “into the woods” where he/she faces tribulations typically by threes, learns to stand up for themselves, and returns to assert their new authority and independence.  Fables does not follow this exactly, but similar themes are followed.  All of the characters are various shades of grey, neither completely good or bad.  Willingham even makes characters that you should hate likeable.  Prince Charming is the best example of this.  Thrice divorced, shaking up with any woman with money that he can steal, he is a horrible excuse for a human being.  But he is still immensely likeable.

One great aspect of Fables is that nearly every arc is presented as a specific type of genre fiction.  The first arc is a murder mystery, with the last issue actually being called “The Parlor Scene” where everything is revealed.  The second arc is the story of a revolution, a modern retelling of Orwell’s Animal Farm.  There are romances, there are intrigue stories, there are war stories.  All different story telling methods are employed, but they never seem disconnected from each other.  The whole work flows together beautifully.  As the story progresses, the rules of how the universe works are shown, and they are reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.  The Fables have powers that normal people (we’re known as mundies) believe them to have, and the more widely known the Fable is, the more powerful they are.  A character takes a bullet to the head, but because everyone knows her story, she makes a perfect recovery.  There is another case where characters die, but someone has to fill their place in the stories.  This sort of meta-level examination of literature is fascinating.  Jack of Fables, the spin-off series featuring Jack of beanstalk fame, goes even further, developing a race called Literals, personification of literary devices like the pathetic fallacy (giving human emotions to inanimate objects).

I would recommend this to anyone who loves comics, and to those that have never read comics before.  Because the characters are those that everyone knows, but in new situations, it is immediately accessible and highly addictive.  I recommend this to everyone because anyone who loves to read will find pleasure in thinking about what the characters of their favorite stories are up to after the “Happily Ever After.”  There are some minor language, sexual, and violence issues, but nothing horribly offensive.  The only problem I have known people to have with the series is having to wait for more.  I’ve long said that comics are a deep, dark hole, and amazing series like Fables are the reasons I never want to find my way out.  Until next time, folks.

The Declaration

The Declaration by Gemma Malley

Dystopian novels are an interesting bunch.  They present a bleak vision of the future where some current social problem is magnified to an enormous extent.  While these books a great, and it’s always interesting to see what the world could potentially look like, there tend to be a number of cliches that arise from this genre.  The main character tends to be indoctrinated completely, believing wholly in the system they were brought up.  This is a way for the author to establish how his or her universe works.  Then comes the second main character who can see how things are wrong and together with the main character, they fight the system.

The Declaration follows this formula, but still manages to be a good read.  This strength comes from the nature of the world Gemma Malley has created.  The year is 2140 and pharmaceutical advancements in the form of a drug called Longevity allows humans to live forever.  But if everyone lives forever, we’d run out of space pretty quick.  In order to begin taking the drug, you must sign a declaration stating that you will never have a child.  You are required to make this decision by 16, and you must actively say no, or you have made the declaration by default.  The story follows Anna, who was born illegally and is considered a Surplus.  It is implied that other countries readily kill Surplus children, but England, where the story is set, is more evolved and tries to give Surpluses a purpose, training them for menial jobs like house cleaning and hard labor.

Malley is very good at slowly giving out clues about this future world.  She doesn’t spell it all out on the first page.  We learn slowly that the worlds resources are gone, and there are harsh restrictions on energy, food, and water.  Christianity appears to have been replaced with a more naturalistic religion.   Mother Earth is constantly referred to, and people seem to be afraid to disappoint her.  Surpluses like Anna are indoctrinated into believing that they are a strain on the natural order of things, that their very presence is an affront to Mother Nature.  It basically boils down to old people refusing to let go of their power, and making new generations illegal.  This is ageism taken to the extreme.  There are also hints that poorer countries are not given Longevity as freely as wealthier nations.  There is something very sad about this world.  It reminds me a lot of the movie Children of Men.  The world is just tired and in need of new blood.

The outsider character is Peter who refuses to be indoctrinated and convinces Anna that she can fight too.  Frankly, I didn’t care too much about this aspect of the story.  The world, and how it works, held my interest more than Anna’s discovery that there should be children in the world.  This may be that these are little more than cardboard cutouts of characters.  The villain is genuinely sinister, but when her backstory is given, I didn’t sympathize with her because I had already guessed it.  If Malley had made a more intriguing story set in this amazing world, I would have loved this book even more.

Trade Waiting: Spider-man One More Day

Spider-man: One More Day

Writers: J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada

Artist: Joe Quesada

Issues:  Amazing Spider-man #544-545, Sensational Spider-man #41, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man #24

Here it is, one of the most controversial comic arcs in the past year.  I had complained at great length about this story without having read it myself.  Shame on me.  Coverage of this story was so widespread, I knew everything that happened.  I went in with my preconceived notions of what was going to happen, and how much I was going to rant and rave about for many months to come.  I felt most sorry for my coworkers, who would invariable have to endure more of my complaining about Spider-man.

Now that I’ve read the story, and am a couple months away from the hype and all the opinions on the Internet, I’ve formulated a new opinion.  For those that don’t know, Aunt May is in mortal peril yet again, having been shot during an assassination attempt on Peter.  Peter is all kinds of depressed, and searches the Marvel Universe for some kind of cure, knowing that he would give anything to have just one more day with her.  This is emotional tripe at its finest.  Aunt May seems to be always at death’s door, so I cared little for the situation.  Peter’s reaction was what could be expected, he felt very guilty because the bullet was meant for him.  But help finally comes to Peter’s aid.

Evil Genius

Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks

Imagine what Harry Potter would have been like if he had discovered that instead of being born to loving, though dead, parents, he was instead the son of Voldemort.  Harry would be heir to his entire evil empire, and sent not to Hogwarts, but to a school teaching all aspects of evil.  Essentially, that is Evil Genius.  Cadel Piggott gets into some trouble because he is too smart for his own good.  His adoptive parents are encouraged by the police to take Cadel to a therapist after he breaks into several different websites.  His therapist informs him that his biological father is the nefarious Dr. Darkkon, a supervillain currently in prison.  Cadel’s evil father begins to take an active role in Cadel’s education, teaching him the ways of the Force, as it were.  After graduating high school at 13, he is enrolled in the Axis Institute, a school to train future supervillains founded by Dr. Darkkon.

While the setup is very much like Harry Potter, with a poor little orphan boy with horrible surrogate parents being swept off to a school that embraces everything about him, Evil Genius is a very different beast.  Cadel Piggott/Darkkon is a hard character.  He’s not necessarily evil, he’s just super intelligent with no proper outlet for his ideas and interests.  He’s obsessed with systems, like traffic systems and the more complex system of human social interactions.  He learns about them by experimenting with them, and causing problems so that he can learn more.  If that’s by causing a traffic jam or setting off a chain of events that all of his classmates in his high school fail their final exams, it’s all in the interest of expanding his knowledge.  Again, he’s not evil or malicious, his intent is truly to learn, but it’s hard to empathize with him.  He’s almost so smart, he’s another species.

The True Meaning of Smekday

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex

Earth has been invaded by aliens.  Under the command of Captain Smek, the aliens called the Boov have taken control of the planet, renamed everything after their great leader, and forced humans to move to remote locations.  In America, humans are given Florida, until the Boov discover they like oranges, so they are relocated to Arizona.  The main character, Gratuity Tucci, decides to drive to Florida and Arizona, and hopes to find her mother who had been abducted by the aliens shortly before the invasion.  Along the way, she gets a flat tire and a Boov by the name of J.Lo helps her by repairing her car, making it hover.  They set out on a cross-country adventure and wackiness ensues.

Essentially, this is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for kids.  It’s a mix of science-fiction, humor, and some light social commentary.  I’m not always the biggest fan of humor in science-fiction, however when it works, it’s great.  This book has moments that are just ludicrous, and it is very funny.  As J.Lo, our main alien character, discovers new things about Earth, and the English language, funny things just tend to happen.  He loves urinal cakes for a snack and thinks armadillos are awesome, and he finds it difficult to use American restrooms because the Boov have seven genders, not just two.  The book is long, over 400 pages, and the humor seems to fizzle out towards the end.  The author may have just run out of steam, or he was trying to make it more serious in the end.

There are more serious aspects to the book, with social commentary that is never heavy-handed.  My favorite moments were towards the end when Tip (Gratuity’s nickname) finally reaches Arizona and discovers how Americans are rebuilding.  Each city is run differently.  Phoenix is a military dictatorship.  The president is running a small farming community.  There are some fine citizens who think there should be clear lines dividing where each race can live.  “We need to start the new America out right” they say.  Seeing a culture rebuild itself after a major catastrophe always fascinates me.  What I love about this book is that the rebuilding is not the focus, so it never becomes overwrought and complicated.  It’s subtle.

The True Meaning of Smekday is a great, funny sci-fi book in the vein of Douglas Adams’ books.  It is essentially a road trip story involving a girl trying to find her mother.  Helping her along the way is an alien sidekick.  The humor is fun, never vulgar, but seems to run out towards the end, where it is replaced by a compelling vision of America compressed, against its will, into the state of Arizona.  The length could be too much for some younger kids, but the illustrations keep it accessible.  I would recommend it to fans of humor and sci-fi.

Airborn

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Matt Cruse is a cabin boy aboard the airship Aurora, a dirigible filled with the lighter then air gas, hydrium. He yearns to move up in rank and become an assistant sailmaker, a person who attends and repairs the giant gas cells that keep the ship afloat, just like his deceased father. Matt’s adventure starts when he encounters an elderly balloonist in a dramatic midair rescue attempt. The balloonist eventually dies soon after confiding in Matt about strange creatures hereto undiscovered; creatures that live their whole lives in the open air. Six months later Matt encounters the balloonists granddaughter, Kate de Vries, on a trip to Australia, and discovers that not only does she share his curiosity about the mysterious creatures but plans on finding evidence of their existence. In the meantime Matt discovers he won’t get promoted because a young man of wealth and connection, Bruce Lunardi, has been placed as the new junior sailmaker. To top it off Matt and the airship encounter pirates and are eventually shipwrecked on a uncharted island that may hold the proof of the airborn creatures they’ve been looking for. But the island holds many dangers that will test their ingenuity, courage, and may hasten the end of their mortality.

This was an enjoyable novel that is in the tradition of old swashbuckler movies, and the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. The novel keeps a good balance between its action scenes and character development. The reader not only becomes invested in the plot, the predicaments (of which there are many) that the characters find themselves in, but also in the characters themselves, how they grow and change because of the situations they face. The only defect is that the novel slows down a bit in the middle, but it’s redeemed by a rousing, action packed conclusion.

I’d recommend it for anyone 12 and up, especially those who are interested in pirates and classic adventure yarns.

Trade Waiting: Sinestro Corps War Volume 1

Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War Volume 1

Writer:  Geoff Johns, Dave Gibbons

Artist: Ethan Van Sciver

I know next to nothing about DC.  I know vaguely each of the major players, but beyond the Superman and Batman movies, I’m ignorant.  I was told by several people to read the Sinestro Corps storyline in Green Lantern.  There were a lot subtleties that I probably didn’t pick up on, but I have to say that I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would.  It was clearly built on a solid history, and there were points that I had no idea what the characters were talking about, but the current story was strong enough to hold my interest, and got me wanting to read more about Green Lantern.

The bad guy Sinestro has found a Yellow Power Ring and is amassing an army of followers, giving them all rings.  This army stands in opposition to the Green Lantern Corps, and they are called, ironically enough, the Sinestro Corps.  Their goal is to spread fear throughout the universe, to bring all worlds under Sinestro’s rule, and impose order on a chaotic universe.  They kill a lot of Green Lanterns, the Lanterns fight back.  That’s basically the story.