Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
Snow White may have been the fairest in the land but she was not always wise in her choice of suitors. Happily married to Bigby Wolf, once enamoured by the charms of a Prince and former slave to the whims of dwarves, Snow White’s past comes back to haunt her as the truth of one the captors found in the ruins of Fabletown is revealed. It is a secret that will divide and break hearts, the mirror didn’t just speak the truth, it was able to crack glass.
The problem with a successful series is that somewhere along the line the author has to follow through on a story line that just doesn’t feel to the reader as though they want to be part of, that at some juncture it might have been better to leave a character behind, revelling in their own adventure and unseen by the reader first hand. Such is the split nature of Bill Willingham’s Fable graphic novel Snow White, that whilst her own story is dramatic, excellently told and full of hidden pathos, the book shares its time with the continuing story of Bufkin the Flying Monkey and the revolution is Oz and its surrounding towns. It is a pairing that somehow feels forced, joined at the hip with a cousin that doesn’t deserve the praise; one part of the book enjoyable, steaming with well placed intentions and the other whose intentions come across as just wanting to finally rid themselves of a story line that cowers in the shadow of its more appreciated partner.
Whereas Bufkin’s story is bordering on the understated, a backdrop to the main event, Snow White is glorious, charming, and brutally sad and the final depictions of a family torn apart by lust, power and terror are amongst the finest to have been produced in the long running saga. They scream to be read and the dramatic ending is one in which to feel the devastation in all its beauty.
A graphic novel release that should have been arguably separated out, that should have even had one easily left on the sidelines but for a small anecdote of legends won and spurs gained, Snow White is a novel that stands out but could have been greater than the sum of its distinctive parts.
Fables: Snow White is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall