Or, A Year in the Life. Another Epinions orphan.
Bill Willingham's Fables: Mean Seasons focuses mostly on Bigby Wolf and Snow White and their children, and some upheavals in the lives of the Fables of Fabletown.
The first two stories, "Cinderella Libertine" and "Dog Company," give us a view of Bigby's activities now and back when. It seems that Cinderella, after her failed career as a revolutionary (Animal Farm), has gone to work for Bigby, undercover, while Bigby himself is revealed to be no stranger to black ops, blowing a clandestine Nazi operation. (Think Frankenstein Redux.) "The Cruel Hot Summer" brings us back to Snow, who delivers six cubs (much to her surprise) coincidentally with the mayoral election, which results in a landslide for Prince Charming, because of his campaign promises. In "The Long Hard Fall," Snow is at the Farm with the babies and Bigby has made off for parts unknown, while Beauty and Beast, their successors as Deputy Mayor and Sheriff, respectively, of Fabletown, cope as best they can. We learn in "The Dark Killing Winter" that transition to the new administration is not all that smooth: Boy Blue, who knows how everything works, disappears, along with several magical artifacts. And Beast decides, as an act of clemency, to commute Flycatcher's (the Frog Prince) sentence of community service, much to Flycatcher's dismay. We also witness the first of a series of mysterious deaths, which seems somehow connected to a letter from Frau Totenkinder to Snow about her seven children. And in "Until the Spring," we learn that there was indeed a seventh child.
Although it's not clearly defined, in terms of a real "plot," there is an overarching storyline to this volume, but it grows in your awareness rather than being plainly laid out. Fortunately, Willingham's storytelling is engaging enough that I didn't feel the lack. The dialogue, however, sometimes goes flat: it's fairly matter-of-fact to begin with, but the situations are generally enough to carry it. That's not always the case in this collection.
The art, a team effort by Mark Buckingham and Tony Akins, pencils, and Steve Leialoha and Jimmy Palmiotti, inks, maintains its appeal, but once again, is somewhat constrained by the heavy scripting. The babies, though, are adorable.
It's a filler volume, really, a sort of breather before the next chapter of the fight against the Adversary resumes. It's still a good read, but I can't really put it at more than a 3, maybe just a smidge above.
(Vertigo, 2005) Collects Fables #22 and 28-33.
The first two stories, "Cinderella Libertine" and "Dog Company," give us a view of Bigby's activities now and back when. It seems that Cinderella, after her failed career as a revolutionary (Animal Farm), has gone to work for Bigby, undercover, while Bigby himself is revealed to be no stranger to black ops, blowing a clandestine Nazi operation. (Think Frankenstein Redux.) "The Cruel Hot Summer" brings us back to Snow, who delivers six cubs (much to her surprise) coincidentally with the mayoral election, which results in a landslide for Prince Charming, because of his campaign promises. In "The Long Hard Fall," Snow is at the Farm with the babies and Bigby has made off for parts unknown, while Beauty and Beast, their successors as Deputy Mayor and Sheriff, respectively, of Fabletown, cope as best they can. We learn in "The Dark Killing Winter" that transition to the new administration is not all that smooth: Boy Blue, who knows how everything works, disappears, along with several magical artifacts. And Beast decides, as an act of clemency, to commute Flycatcher's (the Frog Prince) sentence of community service, much to Flycatcher's dismay. We also witness the first of a series of mysterious deaths, which seems somehow connected to a letter from Frau Totenkinder to Snow about her seven children. And in "Until the Spring," we learn that there was indeed a seventh child.
Although it's not clearly defined, in terms of a real "plot," there is an overarching storyline to this volume, but it grows in your awareness rather than being plainly laid out. Fortunately, Willingham's storytelling is engaging enough that I didn't feel the lack. The dialogue, however, sometimes goes flat: it's fairly matter-of-fact to begin with, but the situations are generally enough to carry it. That's not always the case in this collection.
The art, a team effort by Mark Buckingham and Tony Akins, pencils, and Steve Leialoha and Jimmy Palmiotti, inks, maintains its appeal, but once again, is somewhat constrained by the heavy scripting. The babies, though, are adorable.
It's a filler volume, really, a sort of breather before the next chapter of the fight against the Adversary resumes. It's still a good read, but I can't really put it at more than a 3, maybe just a smidge above.
(Vertigo, 2005) Collects Fables #22 and 28-33.
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