Merry Wanderer of the Night:
comic book

In Fables 1 we learned that all the characters from fairy tales, or Fables as they call themselves, are hiding out in New York City since their lands were taken from them. This, of course, doesn't include the animal Fables like the three little pigs because how are three pigs supposed to hide out in New York City? All of the nonhuman Fables were sent to a farm in upstate New York where Snow White goes to check on them once a year. This year she finds that the town is in complete unrest and there is a threat for an uprising. Since Snow White is rather gullible she doesn't notice what is happening right under her nose, but her sister Rose Red as an inkling for what is happening.

Bill Willingham draws quite obviously from Animal Farm and The Lord of the Flies to create this comic book, which is something most book nerds will appreciate. It was bizarre experience to read it because I wasn't sure if I was supposed to side with Snow White or with the animal Fables. It seems like the animal Fables are evil, but then at the same time I can see their point. It would really suck to be locked into upstate New York and never be able to live simply because you look like an animal and not a human. And while they make some rookie mistakes, they actually seem to be pretty smart. They figure out how to make guns they can use and they trick Snow White pretty easily. Snow White seems to be pretty dumb during this whole thing, and I have a hard time rooting for a dumb person.

The artwork is really some of the most beautiful comic art I have ever seen. The colors in this are outstanding. The pages are particularly bright because of the animals, as you can see from the cover design. They really pull you into this world where strange and unlikely things happen. I was also pleased with how well animal emotions were portrayed in their faces, which I think would be much more difficult to achieve in animals than it is in humans.

Fables Vol. 2: Animal Farm

is overall a much tighter story than Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile

. It helps create the world but doesn't spoon feed us information, we find out things slowly with the characters. It is some great world building. My only complaint is that the last fourth of the book seemed extremely rushed. I don't want to give away why I think that is because it would ruin a pretty important part to the story, but I think it's worth mentioning. I was satisfied with the ending because I felt it promised I would find out more in the next volume, but if I don't find out more I'm going to be pretty disappointed.

I give Fables 2 a B.

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A new Spider-Girl series just started last week, so I did something I haven't done in four years. I bought an issue of a comic. At $3.99 this was a pretty serious decision, but I couldn't wait. Why all the excitement? Well there was quite a bit of buzz about the look of the new Spider-Girl, otherwise known as Anya Corazon. It's not secret that females in comic books are usually represented with humongous breasts and they seem pretty ditzy. From what I've read, the artists and writers working on the new Spider-Girl tried to make Anya look like a normal teenage girl (she pretty much does, no huge boobs here) and act like a normal teenage girl (I would actually say she seems more mature than the normal teenage girl). As someone interested in comic books, reading, and feminism, I was all over the new Spider-Girl.

Anya is your average teenage girl, except for the fact that she is a superhero which makes her late for class and gets in the way of her homework and social life. Anya isn't a superhero in that she has superpowers (something a lot of Marvel fans are complaining a lot). Rather, Anya seems to have decided to become Spider-Girl, which is something this issue explores. I really like Anya for this because her decision to me makes her seem like she has a higher calling and that she wants to be dedicated to helping others--something I think a lot of people around me are interested in as well. Her father is a reporter who mostly works with the Fantastic Four in this issue, and at the beginning of this issue they are just moving into their new apartment together. Anya is struggling to find her place as a superhero amongst the big names her father works with, but that doesn't stop her from doing everything she can to fight crime.

Most comic books have a running story and dialogue in most panels. Spider-girl has both of these things and you can read Anya's texts and Tweets along with the story. I really loved this aspect of the comic book as someone obsessed with social media. You can even follow The_Spider_Girl on Twitter to see what's she up to in between issues. As a comic book I think this represents the present generation pretty well. Overall this was a great experience-- the artwork was interesting and active, and the story line was complex enough to carry me through the entire issue without feeling bored, but not so complex I ended the issue confused about what just happened. If you're looking for a start into comic issues, this might be a good one to start with.

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Astrid is British. She plays bass. She's seventeen with one year left of high school. She fights with her parents. She has a sweet hairdo. She is dreaming about her imaginary friends.

When I picked up Suburban Glamour

I thought it would just be about a punk high school girl, which it is, but it's also a fantasy story which I wasn't expecting at all. Astrid's dreams are becoming reality, and it seems like the creatures from her dreams are dangerous. The only thing distracting her from them is this new store in town run by a punk New Yorker named Aubrey who Astrid wants to be like in every possible way. Well there is that, and the fact that everyone around her is telling her what to do, telling her to figure out what she wants to be, and telling her to stop concentrating so much on her music and focus more reality (Wow I've never experienced anything like that before!).

I might be a little biased in my love of this comic book. After all, Astrid reminds me a lot of myself in high school, and actually a lot like myself right now. But then again I'm not a huge fan of fantasy and still loved the fantasy aspect of this book. Whenever life gets hard we wish for something else, thinking it would be easier, and this is precisely what Astrid experiences except she is actually offered a different life and has to decide if she wants to take it or not. Truly fitting for a story about a seventeen-year-old, because that is the age when you have to make so many choices. Where you will go to college, what you want to do with your life, and who you want to be.

The artwork kinds of harkens back to the Blondie comic strip. Not exactly, but the way things are placed and outlined kind of reminds me of that. The images are cleaner than the comic strip though, and light is played with a lot in this book. It seems to be moving in order of morning to night, but that actually threw me off a little bit with time. I thought all of this was happening in consecutive days, but towards the end of the book I realized this was not the case.

I'm going to give Suburban Glamour an A.

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Coward

is the first volume in the Criminal series by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. It is a dark crime novel with lots of shooting, drugs, and police chases. It reads like Grand Theft Auto on the page-- except they're not stealing cars. The main character of coward is Leo, whose father was a professional pickpocket. Leo started pickpocketing when he was eight years old and that is the life he has always known. He isn't necessarily happy with this life though, and he is terrified he will end up in jail like his father. He is taking care of his father's friend, Ivan, who is addicted to heroin and serves as a daily reminder for what he could end up like.

I'm not a huge fan of crime, murder, police chases, etc, but I really enjoyed Coward because I think Leo has very normal fears for being a criminal. Above all I think he wants to live a different life from his father, and a lot of characters in the comic book express the same sentiment, but he just doesn't know how because it's easier to do what you know than to go off on your own to try something new. This is also shown through his friend Greta, who is involved in one last heist to make some money before she and her daughter move away for a fresh start.

After reading The Walking Dead I was thrilled to see such great narration. We get the story from Leo's perspective, which is extremely reflexive and self aware. There is also great, believable dialogue that falls back on a few old favorite crime phrases, but is overall enjoyable to read. The drawing style was good, but I didn't feel it was necessarily totally unique. I listened to a conversation recently where someone said comic books are usually one or the other, good narrative and okay art, or great art and okay narrative. If I'm comparing The Walking Dead and Coward I would say The Walking Dead has great art and Coward has a great narrative. It all just depends on what you want. Apparently I like a great narrative more though (big surprise) because

I'm giving Coward a B.

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I went to Daydreams, the comic book store in Iowa City a few weeks ago to ask for some really great comic books. The guy at the counter didn't wait a second to put a copy of The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye in my hands. I was intrigued-- I'm not a humongous zombie fan, although lately I've become more interested in how zombies represent humankind. This appears to be of interest to Robert Kirkman as well because in his introduction to the book because he says what he 's going for is not "goofy characters and tongue in cheek antics" but rather to "show us how messed up we are." And he does a great job of doing that.

Rick Grimes, a Kentucky cop, wakes up in the hospital after a gun wound to find that the hospital is completely empty. Or at least that is what it appears until opens the door to the cafeteria and finds the floor covered with zombies. He runs out of the hospital to find there are zombies everywhere, and returns to his house to find it abandoned. He then goes out on a search for his wife and son who could quite possibly be dead. The beginning of this story was gripping and I was turning the pages so fast to find out if he would find his family again, or if he would be taken over by zombies.

The comic book gets a little sour towards the middle though. This comic book doesn't have the most sincere dialogue around the middle parts. There is a lot of shouting and anger, but it all felt very stiff to me which made the whole experience of the comic book a little dull. Towards the end the characters talk about their life before the zombies and how they envision life in this new world, and that is when the book really starts picking up. The dialogue stays at this mature level for the rest of the comic book, and by the end I wanted to jump up from the bench I was sitting on to go get the next book and find out what happens next.

Overall this is interesting idea and I'm interested to see how it plays out. The artwork is fabulous, grayscale, and really detail oriented. I hope the mature dialogue carries through to the next book because there are so many ideas that could be explored if only the writing was a little stronger.

I'm giving Volume 1 a C.

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As part of my Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay readalong I'm posting reviews of comic books all week. Today's comic book is Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile

, which I purchased at the Twin Cities Book Festival. I've heard a lot of great things about this comic book on podcasts, blogs, and from friends. I honestly don't know why I waited so long to read it because the idea attracted me immediately. All of the characters from fairy tales and fables have been chased out of their homelands and now live in various parts of New York State. They fit in with humankind, but they also have their own governance and rules. Snow White is the Director of Operations. She divorced Prince Charming after she found him in bed with her sister (yeah these aren't PG) and she has got an attitude in this book. Love it.

There are five parts to Volume 1 but the story is linear. From the very beginning we know something happened to Snow White's sister, Rose Red, because Jack (like Jack in the Beanstalk), comes rushing to the cop, Bigby Wolf, to try and get him to investigate the case. Jack is Rose Red's sister, but Bigby questions their relationship. At the apartment Bigby sees nothing but blood all over the apartment, and speculates that Rose Red is dead. She doesn't tell Snow White right away though, and Snow White wants to murder him because of it. While all of this is going on all of the members of Fabletown are preparing for a huge Remembrance Day celebration to remember their homelands.

When I initially heard about a comic book based off of fairy tales I figured it would probably be cute. Fables is not cute, it's incredibly dark and sarcastic-- which I love. Bill Willingham manages to push these characters further than I've ever seen in a parody. Others have wondered if characters are really happy when the story ends, but Willingham looks at them like real people. And he looks at their immortality-- sure Beauty and the Beast get married and live happily ever after, but can you really live happily ever after for eternity? If you've never read a comic book before I think this is a great one to start with. The stories will be familiar to you and you can get used to the style of comic books easily with this one.

I give volume one of Fables a B.

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