Fables: Animal Farm

Cover by James Jean

Fables: Animal Farm (2003)

Writer: Bill Willingham

Penciller: Mark Buckingham

Inker: Steve Leialoha

Colorist: Daniel Vozzo

Letterer: Todd Klein

So I took the dive and read the second issue of the Fables series. Directly following the first issue, Legends in Exile, Animal Farm has an entirely different feel and theme. After establishing the central characters and history, Animal Farm delves much more into the politics of the Fabletown community.

Snow White, the deputy mayor of Fabletown, brings her estranged sister, Rose Red, along for an annual business trip to the Farm, the upstate New York community where folklore characters that can’t pass (ie. the Little Pigs, Shere Khan, the Three Bears etc) in normal society live. It quickly becomes evident that there is major unrest among the Farm’s residents, sowed in particular by the Three Little Pigs, in a not-so-subtle nod to the issue’s namesake.

A revolution is brewing, weapons are converted, Goldilocks raises a call to arms, a pig is slaughtered and Snow White barely escapes with her life. There was quite a lot of action to take in.

Fables: Legends in Exile

Cover by James Jean

Fables: Legends in Exile (2002)

Writer: Bill Willingham

Penciller: Lan Medina

Inker: Craig Hamilton, Steve Leialoha

Colorist: Sherilyn van Valkenburgh

Letterer: Todd Klein

So at work we sell Fables, the on-going comic series by Bill Willingham about fairy tale and folklore characters struggling to survive in the “real” world after being forced out of their magical homes by the Adversary.

Now there’s a ton of Fables comics, so I was always overwhelmed by them and never bothered to pick one up. Furthermore, I am a huge fan of folklore and am always disappointed whenever I read like a modernized fractured fairy tale work. They’re never that much fun or even that well-written but after the series was recommended to me, I decided why not and try my hand at the first Fables graphic novel, Legends in Exile.