Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
There are times when all you want to do is get hold of Bill Willingham’s phone number and phone the writer to tell him in no uncertain terms just how grateful you are as a reader that he came up with the idea for the Fables books, which has to be seen as up there with Joe Hill’s Locke & Key series in terms of originality and continuing brilliance. The 15th in the series of combined Graphic Novels, Rose Red, is no exception to the rule.
Rose Red is an entertaining character at the best of times, but her slow decline into depression and hopeless despair at the loss of Boy Blue is one that that really has caught the eye and the story line, the hangover from the final war against the Adversary, for many of the series devoted fans. The sister of Snow White has never had it easy and the loss of her sibling to what she always believed was the fairy-tale life being married to a handsome prince was one that hit her hard.
It is into this that grief is highlighted and the realisation that no matter what we perceive to have happened, unless we were there for every minute of someone else’s journey, it is a circumstance, a distance of travel that can be attained by anyone at any time. Grief has no time limit, it needs to be seen through to its natural conclusion and can only be eased along with the help perhaps of a best friend or the shock admission of someone else’s story being entwined into your own.
It is this grief and sorrow that is brought very clear during the whole of Rose Red, the discovery that Snow White’s life had been just as arduous and that Rose Red had unfairly judged her based on presumption and growing jealousy.
Fables has always courted showing emotional trauma throughout its tenure as one of the best graphic novels around and yet something about Rose Red really gets under the skin of the reader, it seeps under the welcome mat of personal experience and reminds you, goads you, into remembering when all hope was lost and despair threatened to take everything away, only to be pulled back in time to realise that someone else needs you more than you need yourself. It is a graphic novel that shows that life within community is about caring about someone else more than you care for yourself.
A wonderfully demanding read, one that scales a different height to others but is nonetheless just as impressive. A bountiful reading experience!
Fables: Rose Red is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall