Forget It Jake, It’s Fabletown, Part 4: The Art Of Urban Barbecue

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[Wait, what the hell is all this?
See Parts 1, 2, and 3 to catch up!]

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I know, I know; I’m as disappointed, confused, and hungry as you are, but I’m just not paying nine dollars and leaving my nephews in this dark theater for Harkins to warm up a hot dog for me again.

Likewise, Willingham and his accomplices have returned to REGALE US with this sordid tale of sycamore soldiers, which asks:
Will this story break new scientific ground in how retrograde gender dynamics can be?
Did those soldiers get a bulk-deal on those suits from Men’s Warehouse, and could Bigby have gotten it too or would he have to go to Wolf’s Werehouse?
Where do I get one of those bottomless body-dumping wells, not for corpse reasons but just because I have a lot of tree-trimmings to get rid of and like, I’m not gonna rent a woodchipper, that’s just wasteful?
And what does happen if you set a Pinocchio on fire?

The answer to at least one of these awaits below!

Credit where it’s due, always: the covers continue to be really beautiful, and the individual issue-covers included in the back of the trade are no exception despite my long-standing prejudice against photorealistic art styles in comics:

To answer the questions you surely have: no, I don’t know why Matt Murdock is in a Fable bar on the right, nor do I understand why Prince Charming resembles my nephew Evrett to a startling degree. THERE ARE THINGS WE ARE NOT MEANT TO KNOW.

This is a long-ass volume, partially because it includes a one-shot called The Last Castle, which details the Fables’ final escape from the Homelands and lights some foreshadowing for what’s to come by introducing us to Red Riding Hood and her sad history with Boy Blue. And naturally, when setting your stage about heritage and remembrance and identity as an immigrant people, you want to start with some casual, confusing racism:

Maybe this wouldn’t taste so bad if there were any black characters who might have something to say about it, but nope, as we all know melanin was invented in 1926, just like women having opinions, and France. In fairness explicitly racial politics haven’t come up much yet, but in far more damning fairness racial politics are pretty easy not to address when all of your characters ask the caterers to make sure the mayo isn’t too spicy. Speaking of BLT ingredients, here’s Colin the Pig with a grisly omen!

Alright, I admit it: I’m a sucker for “Something is coming”-style ominous pronouncements. Will whatever it is be anticlimactic and disappointing? Who cares, that’s a problem for Future-Me; all Right-Now-Me has to worry about is how cool and portentous that was and also what to do about this horse-bite I got from what turned out not to be Prince Charming’s steed, but just a regular horse who is also an asshole.

In any event, receiving visitations from the god of a tribe of feral British schoolboys doesn’t mean you get to skip your OBGYN appointment, but you CAN promise to let yourself have two pages of froth-flecked reproductive fascism while you’re there, as a treat:

So, this is a weird, gross, and interesting bit: obviously the whole “I think I’LL decide what reproductive healthcare my constituency has access to, thank you very much” is incredibly repugnant, especially in light of this past summer’s wholesale stripmining of reproductive autonomy, which probably wasn’t Willingham’s fault, but nor is it our fault that things age poorly.
No, what’s interesting here (and that I’m honestly very glad he hasn’t touched on, for his is not a gentle hand) is that while Snow’s attitude towards her citizenry’s wombs is tyrannical in the most literal sense, she’s also probably looking at things in terms of Fables being an endangered ethnic group, despite their apparent lack of homogeneity. It brings one a-mind of Battlestar Galactica, when President Roslin outlawed abortion despite her pro-autonomy beliefs because humanity simply couldn’t spare the numbers due to the near-extinction event that kicked off the series, illustrating the extremely common real-life case of there being no good option, only measures of attempted harm-reduction. I’m not saying that was the active thought process for Snow or Willingham—in fact I’d be willing to bet that this paragraph is more thought than either of them gave to it—and I also don’t think it holds up as an argument in-world (especially if Mundies and Fables can breed, which I’m frankly too scared to Google), but it’s interesting to think about in the context of a refugee culture having to decide what level of integration it wants to undertake in its new society. Of course, it’s a moot question since Snow seems to think it’s her prerogative to decide that for them, but I digress, my steppers and typer led thither and yon by the wandermaking influence of a gentle jazz-gummy. Hey, jazz! Look at me, I’m just like Boy Blue and didn’t even have to be racist to pull it off, weird.

Meanwhile, emboldened by completely getting away with Bluebeard’s murder, Prince Charmful-If-Swallowed OH MY GOD I’M SO SORRY I SAW IT AS SOON AS I SAID IT, NEVER AGAIN, but yeah he’s decided to run for Mayor of Fabletown because…unclear. But I feel safe in assuming he’s not doing it out of a sense of community spirit and a desire to serve.

Gross! And either grossly exaggerated or outright fabrications! And I don’t know if it’s what Bill Willingham believes (almost certainly), what Prince Charming believes (unknowable), or what PC wants them to think he believes (1,000%), or–WAIT A FUCKING SECOND.

Even the passingest-for-human Fables, who are free to move among mundies and might have mundy friends or jobs, still don’t live as humans, so they might have no idea that these things aren’t true, at least not the way Charming/Willingham are presenting them; for all they know, mundies might eat glass and be unable to see triangles, and Charming’s reductive, twisted “points” are things actual conservatives tell themselves they believe to excuse their lack of empathy.
…aaaaand unfortunately, I can’t help but remember reading that Willingham wrote the Fable community as a direct stand-in for Israel, which I guess would make the mundies Palestine and a number of other countries, and Charming is doing the “they have everything you deserve” bit to stir up resentment and paint himself as their savior. Bummer. I wanted to be proud of Bill for thinking of something so elegant and Reagany if I could convince myself to be that generous, but then I overthought it and curved right back around to him telling on himself, and now I’m sad. Let’s move on!

Two things:

1. I actually really love the childish sincerity of “Haven’t I done a good job?”, that’s preposterous and sadly charming.
2. What could it ding-dang be, even?! Think it has anything to do with the character we just read a whole mini-story about, which story’s remembrance is the anniversary the gang happens to be celebrating?

Well go to my ass and think about what you’ve done, it’s the Law of Conservation of Deta–I mean Red Riding Hood! Probably has nothing to do with what that disembodied pig’s head was warning Snow abou–

I’m sure that’s fine! They’re probably just getting ready for a party. And there’re only three of them, how much damage could they d–

WELP.

Okay I have to admit, this is cool: sending one of those meal-kit subscription boxes but full of soldiers into enemy territory, and then having them assemble and disguise themselves, replicating like a virus spreading from the inside, a Trojan Horse fulla Legos? Hell yes! This layout is really great too, there’s a ton of visual information to convey in a single (albeit giant) panel and it’s handled pretty elegantly. And because I’ve been clear about wanting to give Willingham every credit, he immediately realized “Oh wait, shit, that rules” and doubled down on it:

I…simply have no idea what the fuck this means, in itself, in its time and place, or re: Willingham’s politics; despite his consistent, mean-spirited conservatism, he seems to think of himself as separate from the left/right spectrum, and I agree inasmuch as I don’t think that either side would be happy to have him. This is so all over the place that I’m almost inclined to believe he did it specifically to bamboozle people trying to tag him as politicizing his work to the tune of one side or the other, which is his prerogative and is also smug and precious and annoying, and I’m the only one who gets to be those things and still be cool.

Y’know it’s funny, I actually wanted to be generous about how Willingham couldn’t have known this scene would essentially come true, give or take some red hats and tiki torches, but in listing off all of these groups and landing on the Young Republicans as the only group that would be able to stage an armed insurrection without getting slaughtered en masse by the cops…
Well, as the man said, the dice can’t read their own spots.

What follows is, honestly and sincerely, the coolest fucking thing this series has pulled off in its half a thousand pages so far: an extended battle sequence between the Wooden Soldiers and the residents of Fabletown, who bring to bear their most monstrous, heroic, or otherwise fantastical natures, it RULES, it kicks SO many asses:

AS YOU CAN SEE, I DID NOT EXAGGERATE: this objectively owns bones, and I’m 100% convinced that it was originally like a page or two at most, but once Bill realized how cool it was he couldn’t stop, and on this occasion I am inclined to applaud, enable, and perhaps even fund his failure of self-control.
(Also yes, that’s the flag of traitors and cowards on Jack’s hat, meaning that yes, Bill decided that was okay for an “heroic” character to wear twice. He’s a…complex creative. Also: extremely racist.)

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Okay if I spend any more time on this already over-long volume I think I’ll have to pay property taxes on it, so all of this stuff also happens:

• Knowing that the Beast’s monstrosity is proportionate to how upset Beauty is with him, Prince Charming attempts to Indecent Proposal them so the Beast will be more effective in battle. It’s gross, it works, and it’s gross that it works.
• Turns out Red Riding Hood was actually Baba Yaga, ’cause fuckin’–I dunno, sure. Mother Totenkopf murders her ass but good.
• Pinocchio deduces that he and the Wooden Soldiers are manikinfolk, ergo they were made by Gepetto, ergo Gepetto is both alive and has been pressed into the service of the Adversary; when he realizes this, he loses his head a little.
• The remaining Fables bury their dead in a magical well, and begin to heal and move on; in a scene that actually does manage to be accidentally hilarious but still touching, several mouse soldiers are enshrouded in handkerchiefs alongside the full-size humanoid Fables bound in sheets.
• Snow goes on a jag about men’s rights and how Bigby really isn’t exerting enough ownership over the pregnancy that neither of them consented to but only her body is the incubator for, then her water breaks.

Volume Zenith: The Battle of Fabletown rules, actually; Snow leading them as strategist and tactician while Charming heads the ground-fighting, where we get to see what fairytales were capable of before Disney got ahold of them. The hardwood-burns-slowly thing? Fuck yes, that’s some rowrbazzle I’d throw at my players in D&D if I didn’t care whether we were still friends afterward.

Volume Nadir: Snow and Blue lamenting how hard it is to be a white man that’s good at the Blues, fucking spare me. Maybe if it had given me anything to think about or at least reminded me of something interesting, like Snow’s abortion fiasco or Charming’s Mundy Queen rhetoric, but nope, just straight-up reverse racism hogwash, to which I say: Let those hogs stay dirty.

Overall Volume Grade:
6.5/10 Boxen Of Assorted Manikin-Makings

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VOLUME OVER. BYE. JEEZ.

–The Bageler

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You’re not a liar, but I can’t believe you
When I’m in this state