Fables: Storybook Love, Graphic Novel Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Love, for some a fairy tale, for others it is the start of a nightmare, a time in which everything they do is wrong and in which can lead to anguish, despair and hopelessness and yet in between the immensity of the emotions, something grand stirs, something in which the future can be held tightly.

For immortals love can be complicated, for a creature of the fairy tale, complicated doesn’t even cover it, it is more akin to placing your trust to a pyromaniac and asking them to make sure it doesn’t catch fire.

In the third of Bill Willingham’s wonderfully created Fables series, love may be in the air but there is no love lost between many of the citizens and the rules, regulations and hopeful revolts that bind them since they were driven out of their own fantastical society. However even in the world of mortals the complexities of the game, the ritual of the dance and the sense of underhand dealings, the likes of Snow White, Rose Red, Jack of the Tales and Prince Charming are not above the taste of love…even if it is not in their interests or plans.

Love can be a tricky situation in which to try and capture, the tediousness of it at times beggars belief and gives false expectation to those who fade into the brightness and only end up disappointed as those expectations are crashed, burned and seared with lies and falsehood, the perfect analogy for the fairy tale love. Love is dirty, it can be brutal but ultimately it’s about finding someone who will tolerate everything you do more than anybody else and that they will also have your back when others will turn theirs on you.

Bill Willingham captures this perfectly, he sums up the feeling well in the relationship between Snow White and Bigby as both parties put aside some of the distrust they have fostered in each other and fight a common enemy who wants both of them dead. By working together they manage to strike an accord in which a union is the best deal, they both have each other’s back and it reflects the relationships enjoyed by others in which love of money, power and corruption is one that is overpowering and dangerous.

Whilst not an easy subject to cover without running screaming down the road towards the area enjoyed by the likes of Mills and Boon in which unrealistic demands seem to rule all, the team behind Fables mirror what life really is about, finding someone who just doesn’t hate you as much as anybody else, someone who is willing to be disgusted less than any other. It is the best any one can hope for.

Fables: Storybook Love is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall