Fables 1: Legends in Exile

Imagine the very well known and much familiar childhood stories characters, somehow living here, in our world of the 21st century. The comic 'Fables' is all about taking these characters and misplacing them in modern reality. Ready yourselves and enter this agreeably amusing modern fable. If you ever wondered what became of Snow White and her lot, before or after or even during any untold parts of her life, this comic series tries to fill the gap.

In the first volume of 'Fables', we are introduced to the secret community of the fables. They live in New York just like us regular people, which the fables folk nick-named the 'mundanes'. The fables escaped into our world, from an extremely vague enemy who is simply called the adversary. The most fundamental law of the community is that they cannot reveal their magical nature to the mundanes.

The secret community is run by King Cole and his loyal right hand and left hand: Snow White and Bigby Wolf. Yes, you got it right; it's ye old big bad wolf, in its human form. Bigby appears to be serving the law now, as a rugged detective and a heavy smoker (The smoking part is not really serving any law).

Snow and Bigby have their hands full investigating the bloody and disturbing disappearance of Rose Red, Snow's sister. I am pretty sure that my old copy of the tale said that Snow White was an only child! I'll let that one slide, for the sake of Fantasy. The plot stretches through out the five issues included in the first volume, until the mystery is conveniently solved by our brilliant duo detectives.

We also get to meet the notorious Blue Beard, Jack of the beans, Puffed-house Piggy, Beauty and the Beast, and last but not least, Prince Charming, these days mostly charming mundane girls into his bed, or theirs, cause he's broke, and his own bed is not presentable.

There's also an extra treat at the end of this comic book: a new original fable, describing how snow and wolf met, hundreds of years ago, in the magical homelands of the fables, and how they became friends rather than predator and lunch, and the way they traveled to our world.

I initially liked the concept of taking the spotless fables, and throwing them into the filth of the "real" world (as real as it gets in comics that is). Building up my expectations that way, I did expect a slightly more sophisticated plot, or a deeper and darker story, or at least some decent mature content, which to say was far from.

The included cover art is interesting, and has the illusive weirdness quality of dreams; I can't really describe it otherwise. It reminds me of some old books I used to have as a child, which back then scared me enough to stay awake. Besides the cover art, the comics' drawings style itself could be termed "traditional" or "stereotypical". The drawings are full of detail which is nice, but the details are sometimes sloppy and unpolished, to my taste. Nevertheless I've grown to like their unique style. Oh, and I loved how bigby wolf was portrayed - kinda sexy to my opinion. I guess it's the bad wolf part that does the trick.