Fables By Bill Willingham
Fables is a fantasy comic series by Bill Willingham surrounding classical fantasy and fable characters but thrown into the modern day scenery of New York City. I read a little bit of this series growing up, but reading it again now with a more grown up perspective on the series presents a lot of new discoveries this time around.
The core concept of classical fable characters mashed into our real life world brings a fresh twist onto the tales we grew up with and loved. Fantastical conflicts get paralleled into modern versions, and thus require modern solutions. The concept of glamours being introduced to disguise the fables as regular mundane people is unique and interesting, and brings on separate elements on the finances of fables, who have additional expenses along with the already exorbitant expenses of regular city life, and how different types of fables are subjected to different types of treatment based on the city society. They are also subjected to different types of treatment based on their cultural fame on the real world. Those who were celebrated and better renowned were better resilient physically than their lesser known counterparts. Even the sheer mashing of fables into one world already brings a lot of possibilities, like Snow White and Bigby Wolf's relationship, despite being from two different stories, but to throw that melting pot into the world of ours makes an entirely new story.
I think Fables is extremely successful in how they rethink the fantasy genre, and bring fresh life back into classical characters we once knew as children, from rather 2 dimensional personalities of older times expanded upon and roughened based on their struggles in a entirely new setting. These characters experience our problems on a fantastical level that doesn't make it depressing how bad real life is, but intriguing how they could be so similar yet so different to us.
The core concept of classical fable characters mashed into our real life world brings a fresh twist onto the tales we grew up with and loved. Fantastical conflicts get paralleled into modern versions, and thus require modern solutions. The concept of glamours being introduced to disguise the fables as regular mundane people is unique and interesting, and brings on separate elements on the finances of fables, who have additional expenses along with the already exorbitant expenses of regular city life, and how different types of fables are subjected to different types of treatment based on the city society. They are also subjected to different types of treatment based on their cultural fame on the real world. Those who were celebrated and better renowned were better resilient physically than their lesser known counterparts. Even the sheer mashing of fables into one world already brings a lot of possibilities, like Snow White and Bigby Wolf's relationship, despite being from two different stories, but to throw that melting pot into the world of ours makes an entirely new story.
I think Fables is extremely successful in how they rethink the fantasy genre, and bring fresh life back into classical characters we once knew as children, from rather 2 dimensional personalities of older times expanded upon and roughened based on their struggles in a entirely new setting. These characters experience our problems on a fantastical level that doesn't make it depressing how bad real life is, but intriguing how they could be so similar yet so different to us.
Comments
Post a Comment