TALKING FABLES WITH WILLINGHAM
Its been nearly four years coming.
In August, Vertigos Fables #40 hits, and in it, the revelation of the Adversarys identity will be made clear.
The story, revealing the leader of the forces that forced the Fables characters, creatures, and people of myth from the Homelands has been one of the many carrots series creator Bill Willingham has dangled in front of readers since the series began. Its the oldest carrot by far, but for many fans, its only become sweeter with age.
Warning spoilers ahead for the events of Fables #38
My original design was to reveal the Adversarys identity a little sooner, but some of the story arcs that kept occurring to me kept pushing that moment back a bit, Willingham told Newsarama. I was going to do it about three years in, and now, its coming in about three and a half or four years into it. Close enough, I guess.
While the Adversary (or the Emperor if youre still living in the Homelands) is a well known figure to the series fans, heres a quick primer for the Fables-deficient: roughly 1,000 years ago, the Adversary invaded the lands occupied by the what we know to be European Fables with an overwhelming force. There was no hope of resistance. Those who werent killed or captured were allowed to flee to the world of the mundanes to find their own way. While the Fables have established and thrived in Fabletown in New York and the Farm (home to non-human Fables), the Adversarys invasion of their lands and resultant transformation of thousands into refugees has always weighed heavily on the Fables.
Meanwhile, the identity of the Adversary (which Willingham has kept as a closely guarded secret) has weighed heavily on the series fans. But, Willingham said, the Adversarys identity is just one small piece of the picture.
The idea behind the big mysteries in Fables is that the series was never going to just be a who is the Adversary? story. Ive always loathed books and television shows where the entire thing is the big mystery, and to keep the series going, the one thing that you can determine right away is that you will never get the big mystery solved. The X-Files comes to mind it was all questions and never a satisfying answer. I think the secret for doing an ongoing series is to create mystery, create questions, give answers occasionally, but by that time, have new mysteries and questions and other elements in play so theres always a system of payoff and reward and new expectations. Thats the secret for any good ongoing series, really.
In other words, yes, the Adversarys identity will be made known in issue #40, but theres going to be further mysteries from there.
Catching up again for folks who may have lapsed in reading the series, issue #40 will be part four of the Homelands arc which has seen Boy Blue, armed with the Jabbewocks Bane (a sword capable of cleaving through anything) and other weapons, wade back into the Homelands, into the heart of the empire, and into the court of the Emperor himself.
Funny thing though, a couple of years back, if youd have asked Willingham who would be the one to go back to the Homelands, his answer would have been Bigby (er, that is, the Big Bad Wolf the former sheriff of Fabletown who can switch between human and wolf form).
I always knew that there would be this arc where a major character heads back to the Homelands to go one on one with the bad guys, Willingham said. I sort of caught myself with my pants down in a sense, because I always thought it was going to be Bigby or I thought that at first but then, in The Last Castle story, we made a front-row spotlight star out of Boy Blue, where he was always intended to be a background character. Suddenly, he was able to carry his own story, and as we implied, he had vast years of military experience and training. So Boy Blue turned out to be a more interesting character than I thought, and he wasnt content to remain in the background at all.
The writer also had a clear idea of how the character invading the Homelands was supposed to look as well.
Image-wise, I kind of wanted whoever this was that was going to be cutting and reaving his way through the Homelands to look like a cross between Zorro and Robin Hood. A lot of the reaction to how he looks so far is that hes along the lines of Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride, which works for me, because he was basically a cross between Zorro and Robin Hood. That was one of the frustrations initially I couldnt figure why there would be any reason on earth for Bigby to dress up like that, because hes not that kind of guy. He spends a lot of time running around as a wolf. Hes not going to dress in a way where hed need to find a way to carry lots of stuff with him when he was a wolf.
So gradually, Boy Blue took over Bigbys role, so by the time we got to Homelands, I knew it would be him running around. The added advantage pf that is that I was able to take Bigby off stage for a while, and the frustrations of the readers are almost palpable in regards to when hes coming back. The old pattern of keeping them wanting and hoping for something comes back again.
And theres the one mystery Willingham is counting on to keep readers around post-#40, though he had to sell his editor, Shelly Bond, on the idea.
Shelly was worried that the reveal of the Adversary would be seen as readers as a signal that they can leave now, but no trust me by the time the Adversary is revealed, the when is Bigby coming back? is going to be so adamant among the fans that theyre going to want to stick around to find that out. And by the time they see what Bigby has been up to; there will be another thing for them to be wondering about down the road.
So weve got Boy Blue cutting his way through very successfully, one could add the Homelands, but what of the lands themselves? In the last three years span, whenever anyone recounted the attack of the Adversary, it was always filled with shock, horror, fire and blood. Naturally, Fables living in the Mundane world assume thats what its like now a charred wasteland, perhaps with the Adversary constantly cackling in the background.
Throughout the Homelands arc though, its been shown thats clearly not the case. The empire run by the Adversary is quite
well, not exactly nice, but decent. And civilized.
Its Imperial Rome, writ large, Willingham said. In movies, we constantly see Rome as the villain, and rightfully so given the parade of increasingly despotic Caesars, but Rome itself was pretty damn stable. They built this vast empire, and more importantly, they knew how to run an empire keep local kings in place, tax the people, but dont tax them into revolt, and let them keep their local gods. The bulk of the idea of running the empire was that its subjects could pretty much continue to do what they wanted, as long as they paid their taxes, and behaved. Because of that, Rome had a pretty stable empire, and thanks to Pax Romana, it was a pretty safe empire as well.
Even though I wasnt promising that all along when the characters would think of the Homelands, in my mind, I always knew that the empire the Adversary had set up in the Homelands was that you have lots of room for evil and corruption, but on a grand scale, its pretty stable. It would have to be to last for, as weve shown, thousands of years. So yeah, for the average guy in the empire, they dont see suppression and atrocity all the time, their lives are more along the lines of, Well, I hope I can get a good crop this year, so I have a little left over when I pay my taxes.
And even the Adversary/Emperor is
well, when introduced in #38, hes not sucking the marrow from the bones of babies, as one might be lead to believe. In the issue, hes making a ruling between two brothers who have petitioned him to settle a land dispute. In a rather Solomonic manner, after seeing that the brothers are steadfast and unyielding, the Emperor decrees that the lands be razed, so they now have nothing to fight over.
The scene, Willingham explained, is again rooted in ancient Rome.
The brothers got exactly what they asked for, but nothing they wanted, the writer said, chuckling. Obviously, a little of what was behind the Emperors decision was based in, How dare you bring this thing to me? If you cant work out the problems in your own family, why are you whining to me? He taught them a lesson in bringing trivial matters before him, but also, in light of using the Roman template, their laws for how families treated one another were very strict that was the base unit for culture. The penalty for patricide was among the worst in Rome. If I remember correctly, in Rome, if you killed your father, you were to be sewn into a bag with a rabid dog and a couple of other crazy animals, and as theyre tearing you apart, theyd toss the damn thing in the Tiber River. The worst of punishment was reserved for those who betrayed the family structure itself, so I wanted to add a little bit of that into the empire.
Issue #38 also allowed Willingham to satisfy his slightly sadistic side as, by all appearances, Boy Blue was pretty damn successful in his task, only to be captured as he tried to escape. Instead of opening on Boy Blue in jail though, issue #39 is an interlude issue, telling of how things are going back in Fabletown.
We knew there would have to be an interlude issue at some point, just because of the pace at which Mark Buckingham could draw the arc, and we wanted him to do his best work, Willingham said. So, with a five part arc, we knew wed need a break. Thats when the evil part of me kicks in, and decided to put the break in just after Boy Blue was captured. So now, you have to wait two months until you can find out what happened. Was the Emperor killed? Did he get overconfident and wasnt expecting this? Did Boy Blue get overconfident with his weaponry, which has allowed him to wade through the entire empire, unopposed? Was Boy Blue, himself killed when the Snow Queen brought him down? Well have to wait and see.
The interlude, according to Willingham, will focus partly on The Tourists, three Fable secret agents who travel the world, making sure that the Fables whove chosen not to live in Fabletown or on the Farm are minding the rules - keeping a low profile, not revealing their magic nature, and not attracting too much attention to themselves. One of the Tourists plays a major role in the issue.
One of these three Tourists is Mowgli from The Jungle Book, all grown up, so imagine Tarzan working as James Bond, and youve got him, Willingham said. Hes been called back to Fabletown for a special meeting with Prince Charming. I wont say exactly why, but it has to do with a scene a while ago when Prince Charming was ranting that they shouldve struck back at the Adversary a long time ago. So now, Charming is calling Mowgli back for a conversation about that.
At the same time, and this goes back to the revolution at the Farm Mowglis friend, Bagheera is still in jail while the other animal revolutionaries have been put to hard labor or seen equal punishment and released. Why has Bagheera been singled out? Mowglis back in town, and hes going to go see his friend, and were going to see how that all ties into this as well. Oh, and they find out who the other traitor theyve long-suspected is. So its a full issue, covering everything thats been going on in Fabletown, as well as some of the repercussions of Boy Blue taking it upon himself to grab some of the best weapons and go one a one-man mission without anyones permission.
Part of the interlude issue also reveals that not everyone among the Fables has been playing with their cards on the table in regards to communication with the Homelands, and that will spill into the arc that follows Homelands.
Speaking of those things to come, Willingham said that, even with the Emperor apparently dead, the story is far, far from over.
Weve hardly even touched on the Oz characters, the Alice in Wonderland characters, and so many others. There are plenty of areas left to explore. The arc after Homelands is when the Arabian Knights characters start showing up. In this vast expanse of the empire where they conqueror for a bit, then spend years and years consolidating those new conquests, conqueror a bit more, consolidate more
its not like the Nazis and the blitzkrieg where they tried to grab everything at once. The way to build a stable empire is to grab what you can handle, not so much that the new members of the empire outnumber those who have grown up under the empires rule. You make citizens of those you conqueror, educate them in the ways of the empire, and then take another bite.
All the worlds that have been conquered so far pretty much match up to the European fables and folklore. Probably about the time Fables the series began, the Emperor began his first, wide-scale invasion of the Arabian Knights lands, so now, the first refugees form that invasion are starting to show up in Fabletown.
That creates a lot of cultural problems, because until now, for hundreds and hundreds of years, Fabletown has been a Euro-centric club. There hasnt been a single brown or black face among the actual residents of Fabletown. The B-plot that will go through the arc after Homelands is that well be following Mowgli on whatever secret mission Prince Charming had for him.
And beyond? What, you need more than the Arabian Knights?
I figure that if its been about 1,000 years of consolidating the European fable lands, and now hes started with the Arabian Knights, then maybe in my lifetime, we might get to some of the Asian fables. Well get a little of the African world in this Arabian wave, simple because of the overlap some of the fables have, but all told, I cant imagine that the series would ever run dry for material. If the series ends, its not going to be because weve run out of ideas to work with.
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