Review: Bill Willingham: Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers

I found Bill Willingham's Fables series to be more engaging as I worked my way through it. March of the Wooden Soldiers offers an even richer story with layers of deception and intrigue -- not to mention angst and guilt -- and a couple of side stories that continue to fill out the major characters.

We start off with a little history on Boy Blue, Snow White's assistant. Every year, Blue and a group of friends gather for an evening of hard drinking. They were the last to escape the Homelands, but the evening is not marked by celebration: there's a lot of guilt that they escaped while others perished. Blue's story is particularly poignant: the last refugee to reach their final stronghold was Red Riding Hood, and she and Blue fell in love. When the final battle came, he sent her to the ship that was carrying the refugees to safety, while he went back to the battle. Unknown to him, she left the boat and went back to fight at his side, while he, through the gift of his commander's magic cloak, was able to transport himself to the ship after it had left.

And now Red Riding Hood has made it to the Earth. But there's something a little off -- her reaction to meeting Blue again is extreme, and not at all friendly. Bigby, as usual, is suspicious. And then a group of men appear, wanting to buy guns. Lots of guns. And, as it turns out, they're not exactly men.

In the meantime, Snow is pregnant, the result of that little camping trip with Bigby, aided and abetted by Bluebeard's hypnosis. She's not really very happy about it. And Prince Charming, having finished off Bluebeard, is searching his apartment for whatever gold, jewels, silver, or anything else of value hasn't gone to fill the coffers of Fabletown. (Bluebeard died intestate, so his fortune reverted to the government. But Prince Charming isn't really interested in full disclosure.) He has a brilliant idea: he's going to run for Mayor.

Things develop, and Fabletown is under attack by the wooden soldiers of the title. Since Bigby is away on his investigation, Snow takes command of the town's defenses, even enlisting the witches to work in Fabletown's defense -- for free, which doesn't make them happy at all, but their options are limited.

This one is a lot of fun, and I think my favorite in the series so far. The story is multi-layered, there's a lot of intrigue, but nothing you can't figure out if you want to. It's so well done, though, that you don't bother. Willingham's script sucks you right in, and it's really easy to just go with the flow of the story.

Mark Buckingham, Craig Hamilton, and P. Craig Russell penciled this volume, and the visuals are just as appealing as the previous collections. The battle scenes are exceptionally effective, but the whole thing is worth looking at. My one objection to this one, and looking back, to the series as a whole so far, is that Willingham scripts fairly heavily -- there's not a lot of room for the visuals to carry the narrative, and it never gets past the idiom of illustrated story and into true graphic literature, with that particular synergy between the elements.

Collects Fables: The Last Castle, and Fables #19-21 and #2-27.

(Vertigo, 2004)

Review: Bill Willingham: Fables, The Deluxe Edition, Book One

I reviewed most of this series at the late lamented Epinions, although for some reason I never reviewed the first three trade paper backs. Maybe this is why.

Imagine all your favorite (and not-so-favorite) characters from fairy tales, folk tales, and children's literature living in Manhattan right now. (Except for the not-so-human characters, who are living on an extensive farm/estate in upstate New York.) Refugees from their own scattered kingdoms and realms, all conquered by a creature known as the "Adversary," they live in a particular section of town, which they have named "Fabletown." They have their own government and spend a fair amount of effort keeping the "mundys" unaware of their existence. King Cole is the Mayor of Fabletown, and Snow White is his deputy, who manages the day-to-day affairs of the Fables -- the real power behind the throne, so to speak. The Big Bad Wolf, now known as Bigby, is the sheriff. (He has taken on human form for the past few hundred years.)
\
The first half of this volume, "Legends in Exile," fills in the background a bit and gives us the first adventure: Jack (of Beanstalk fame) comes huffing into Bigby's office to report a terrible crime: He has been keeping company with Rose Red, Snow's estranged sister, and went over to her place only to discover the apartment a blood-spattered shambles. It's Rose's blood, alright, but there's no trace of her at all. Bigby, being a naturally suspicious sort, immediately comes up with a list of suspects, starting with Jack. The list soon expands to include Snow White and Bluebeard -- one of the few who escaped the Homelands with his fortunes intact.

The second installment, "Animal Farm," finds Snow and Rose (no, she wasn't dead, and no one ever really thought she was) on their way to the Farm on Snow's annual visit. They read the farm to find Weyland Smith, the Administrator, AWOL, and the farm being run by the Three Little Pigs. It soon turns out that there's a revolution brewing, led by Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

I had read this volume of the series as background for a ficlet at Green Man Review, but with the backlog I'd built up of material for review, never went back to it until recently. It's worth following, I think: these are fairy tales for adults, and in many respects probably closer to the originals transcribed by the Brothers Grimm and other collectors than the versions eventually published for children. The characterizations aren't what we might expect -- Snow White is a little rigid, not very sympathetic, and more than a little arrogant (and you'd best not mention the Dwarves in her hearing, if you know what's good for you) -- but the cast is highly entertaining, from the Frog Prince, now in human form, who keeps getting sentenced to community service for eating flies in public, to Beauty and the Beast, whose main marital problem is that the glamor that keeps Beast looking human works more or less, depending on how mad at him Beauty is at any given moment. Reynard the Fox, in "Animal Farm," lives up to his reputation as a trickster, and Goldilocks' relationship with Baby Bear is bound to raise a few eyebrows.

The art is a group effort by Lan Medina, Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha, and Craig Hamilton. There's good stylistic consistency throughout, and while layouts tend to hew closely to the standard frame-follows-frame of Western comics, there's a nice openness to the renderings that keeps it from getting monotonous or claustrophobic, even in the crowd scenes.

Collects Fables #1-10.

(Vertigo, 2009)

Review: Jean Cocteau/Philip Glass: La Belle et la Bête

I first saw Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête many years ago on the big screen and was completely enchanted. And recently a friend loaned me a copy of Philip Glass' opera of the same title, which Glass composed to be performed with the film, and which I enjoyed thoroughly. When I had an opportunity to get a DVD that included both, I pounced. (The joke is that I finally bought a DVD that wasn't in Japanese -- it's in French.)

La Belle et la Bête is Cocteau's adaptation of the fairy tale by Mme. Leprince de Beaumont, about a young woman, Belle, who goes to live with the Beast to save her father, who stumbled onto the Beast's domain on his way home from an unsuccessful trip to salvage his business. Remembering his youngest daughter's only request, he plucks a rose and his fate is sealed: he must die or send his daughter to live with the Beast in his place. (His two older daughters, mercenary monsters both, asked for jewels and brocades.) He returns home and tells his story, and Belle, filled with guilt that her modest request had endangered her father's life, sneaks away on the Beast's enchanted horse.

The film is, to put it quite simply, magical. There's an element of surreality here that, it occurs to me, is basic to fairy tales. The white stallion with his sparkly mane, the doors that magically open, those are pretty standard. The bare arms that serve dinner and that hold candelabra that light themselves, and the sculptured heads that come to life, those are a little out of the ordinary, as is the sort of fuzzy boundary between inside and outside in many of the sets, most particularly Belle's bedroom at the Beast's mansion.

Visually, this one's scrumptious. I've always been fond of black-and-white as a visual medium, and this is just beautiful, with rich shadows, finely detailed highlights, and beautifully modeled grays. It's also full of wonderful tableaux and solo shots that are masterfully composed. This is the restored version released in 2003 by Criterion Collection, and they did a bang-up job: it's clean, smooth, and a joy to look at.

Both Josette Day as Belle and and Jean Marais as the Beast bring the characters to life (although the acting style is, in some places, rather broader than we're used to these days, but it's a fairy tale, after all), and it's Belle's growing acceptance and finally love of the Beast that is the core of the story. It's very well done, subtle and circumspect.

I elected to watch with Philip Glass' opera as the soundtrack, rather than the original with Georges Auric's score (which, on sampling a few bits, has also been beautifully restored). I have to say, the experience is even more magical than I remember the original film. Although the synchronization is not perfect, it's pretty close, and the music itself reflects the fairy tale quality of the story. If you're expecting the Philip Glass of serial minimalism and driving, repetitive phrases that sound like Balinese gamelan, be reassured: this is not that. Yes, the rhythms are there, but not obtrusive, and Glass has tied them to the action of the film. This is Glass from the mid-1990s, much freer and more engaging than the Glass of the mid-1970s.

The set comes with a wealth of features and extras, including a booklet (which I think one must necessarily designate as "lavishly illustrated") with the full film credits, an essay by Cocteau, an excerpt from Francis Steegmuller's biography of Cocteau, the original story, and notes on the restoration. (Strangely enough, the booklet doesn't discuss Glass' opera at all.) The disc itself includes commentaries by Arthur Knight and Sir Christopher Frayling; interviews with Henri Alekan, director of photography, and Hagop Arakelian, the makeup artist; the original trailer and the restoration trailer; a documentary on the restoration, "Screening at the Majestic," the theater where Cocteau viewed the rushes, including reminiscences from Alekan, Marais, and Mila Parely ("Felicie") at the locations used for the film, with narration from Cocteau's diaries. You can view the film either with the original soundtrack or the opera, and depending on your decision, you have the option of the movie subtitles, the opera subtitles, or no subtitles. (It's sort of amazing how much you can pack into one DVD.)

Yes, this is absolutely highly recommended with no reservations whatsoever.

(Criterion Collection, 2003)