Abstract
Bill Willingham’s Fables comic book series and its spin-offs have spanned fourteen years and reinforce that fairy-tale characters are culturally meaningful, adaptable, subversive, and pervasive. Willingham uses fairy-tale pastiche and syncreticism based on the ethos of comic book crossovers in his redeployment of previous approaches to fairy-tale characters. Fables characters are richer for every perspective that Willingham deploys, from the Brothers Grimm to Disneyesque aesthetics and more erotic, violent, and horrific incarnations. Willingham’s approach to these fairy-tale narratives is synthetic, idiosyncratic, and libertarian. This tension between Willingham’s subordination of fairy-tale characters to his overarching libertarian ideological narrative and the traditional folkloric identities drives the storytelling momentum of the Fables universe. Willingham’s portrayal of Bigby (the Big Bad Wolf turned private eye), Snow White (“Fairest of Them All”, Director of Operations of Fabletown, and avenger against pedophilic dwarves), Rose Red (Snow’s divergent, wild, and jealous sister), and Jack (narcissistic trickster) challenges contemporary assumptions about gender, heroism, narrative genres, and the very conception of a fairy tale. Emerging from negotiations with tradition and innovation are fairy-tale characters who defy constraints of folk and storybook narrative, mythology, and metafiction.
Highlights
Bill Willingham’s contributions to fairy-tales in popular culture have spanned fourteen years: from twenty-two collected volumes of his completed Fables (2002–2015) comic book series and multiple spin-offs such as Jack of Fables (2006–2011) and Fairest (2012–2015), as well as the five episodes of the Fables video game The Wolf Among Us (2013), and the novel Peter and Max (2009).1 Fables exemplifies how fairy-tale characters continue to be meaningful in contemporary media
As Adam Zolkover identifies in “Corporalizing Fairy Tales”, Willingham’s work stands out from previous comic books that have engaged folklore: “[Neil] Gaiman [in Sandman] and [Alan] Moore [in Promethea] seem interested in using folklore to explore issues of imagination spirituality, and [...] [Walter] Simonson is interested in using myth to enrich a preexisting fictional landscape [Thor], Willingham’s Fables works in the opposite direction, using the comic book medium [...] to comment on the fairy tales themselves” ([2], p. 40)
Willingham himself dismisses the idea. He offered a “call to disarm” to his fans and reminded readers and viewers that folklore is characterized by continuous development and adaptation to match contemporary tastes: “The Brothers Grimm didn't collect one version of every folktale; they discovered dozens of versions of each one, because it's the nature of folklore to be altered to suit every different folk who wants to make use of it
Summary
Bill Willingham’s contributions to fairy-tales in popular culture have spanned fourteen years: from twenty-two collected volumes of his completed Fables (2002–2015) comic book series and multiple spin-offs such as Jack of Fables (2006–2011) and Fairest (2012–2015), as well as the five episodes of the Fables video game The Wolf Among Us (2013), and the novel Peter and Max (2009). Fables exemplifies how fairy-tale characters continue to be meaningful in contemporary media. He offered a “call to disarm” to his fans and reminded readers and viewers that folklore is characterized by continuous development and adaptation to match contemporary tastes: “The Brothers Grimm didn't collect one version of every folktale; they discovered dozens of versions of each one, because it's the nature of folklore to be altered to suit every different folk who wants to make use of it. Humanities 2016, 5, 32 beautiful, intense, and varied illustrations, such as those by lead-artist Mark Buckingham, but the ways that Willingham deepens fairy-tale characters through innovative narrative techniques. Fables both respects and subverts tradition, revisiting and defying old tales by exploring new possibilities of fairy-tale characters’ personal autonomy. Fables integrates comic book aesthetics, metafiction, folklore, satire, and synthesis with Willingham’s libertarian ideology
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call