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Fairest Vol. 3: The Return of the Maharaja Sean E. Williams, Bill Willingham, Stephen Sadowski, Phil Jimenez

Check it out! Prince Charming is alive! And back!

And that’s the best thing I can say about this volume.

After dying in the battle against the adversary, Prince Charming comes back (which we all knew he would eventually, right? He’s much too powerful) but doesn’t want to go back to the mundy and instead becomes a ruler in an Indus fable world. There he meets a woman, Nalayani, who’s come to ask for help. Her village lost all its men to the adversary and is now constantly being attacked by roaming bands and they’re about to be wiped out. Charming is also facing issues as there are those who aren’t fond of having a white foreigner ruling them.*

I do like Nalayani because she’s awesome, but she’s also a new character and not having lived with her for years, I just didn’t care as much about her as I did about Charming or some of the other Fables characters.

Charming… has lost a lot of character growth. When we first met him, he was an arrogant ass, but over the series he had mellowed and matured, but he’s reverted back to all jack-ass charm and lost what made him a deeper, more likeable character.

But here’s my real problem-- the great romances of Fables have all been a slow burn building up through multiple story arcs. If Charming is *finally* going to meet someone for him, someone “better” than Snow or Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, we need the slow burn. We need to get to know Nalayani, we need to see them get to know each other and fall in love. The whole execution seemed rush and I never bought that Charming liked her more than he likes most awesome women, and Nalayani’s affections seem to turn on a dime. Overall, its was just really disappointing.


*this is problematic, as Charming is set up as the good guy, and those who aren’t into colonization are the bad guys. It's kinda worked out in the end, but ergh. But this whole issue is ergh, so...


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Fairest Vol. 2: Hidden Kingdom Lauren Beukes, Bill Willingham, Inaki Miranda

This is a bit of a jump-back in time from where the main series is. With the “present day” happening in 2002, so the action is pretty firmly at the beginning of the series, with lots of flashback to Rapunzel’s back story.

So, like most fairy tales, Rapunzel has a dark edge that we tend not to retell. In the original, the witch discovers the prince because Rapunzel is pregnant. She casts Rapunzel into the desert where she gives birth to twins. The prince gets tangled in brambles trying to climb the tower, is blinded by the thorns and is also cast into the desert. They all wander around for like 20 years before they find each other, Rapunzel’s tears of joy cure his eyesight and only then do they all live happily-ever-after.

In the Fables world, Frau Tottenkinder is the witch that imprisoned Rapunzel. She casts her out, Rapunzel gives birth, and she’s told her children die during childbirth. She’s always known that they survived and has spent centuries searching for them. At one point, she tries to drown herself but washes up on the shores of a Japanese fable kingdom (named the Hidden Kingdom).

In the present day, she gets a message via attacking crane origami that there is news of her children. She meets up with friends and enemies from her old adopted homeland, and Tokyo’s version of Fabletown where the present is tied with the fall of the Hidden Kingdom to the adversary's forces.

I loved this one. I loved the look at Japanese mythology and fables, how they played in their homeland and how they survive in the modern Mundy world. I liked the old school “present day” with Jack running his schemes, Snow and Bigby in the business office and Frau Tottenkinder doing her thing on the 13th floor of the original building. It was a nice return to the beginning. But more than that, I loved Rapunzel’s story and her strength. We don’t see a lot of her, as she’s not allowed to leave Fabletown because of her hair and she’s been kinda shoved to the side in this series.

There’s also a tantalizing clue about the truth about her daughters, that I don’t believe we’ve seen the answer to yet. (I’m trying to rack my brain, as this happens so far in the past to see if we’ve seen them and not known it, or if they have yet to come up.)

This is my favorite volume in the Fairest spin-off series.

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Next week sees the release of the third trade of Fairest, the spinoff series of Fables which has seen a number of writers and artists tell standalone stories spotlighting the different female characters of Bill Willingham’s world. Return of the Maharaja, however, tries something a little different still – writer Sean E. Williams and artist Steve Sadowski introduce a new hero from myth to readers, in the form of Nalayani.

Coming straight from the epic mythology of Indian folkore, Nalayani is a dynamic, contrary, unpredictable sort of lead character; and her story dominates the third arc of the series. But Williams’ story not only brings in new characters like Nalayani – it also features some the return of some unexpected, familiar faces, to the shock of long-term Fables fans. I was lucky to have the chance to talk to Williams about his story, and he explained how it came together, the surprising twist appearance of a fan-favourite character… and giant monsters.

Steve: How did you get involved with writing this arc of Fairest?

Sean: I’d known Bill Willingham for years from working on another project together, and getting to be friends over the course of that time.  Then Chris Roberson started doing the Cinderella arcs, and he was in the middle of the second one when I had an idea for a FABLES story that I just couldn’t get out of my head. So Saturday night of SDCC 2010 I was walking between hotels with Bill, and I got up the courage to ask him if he’d be interested in hearing a pitch for a story. He said he would be, so I immediately got away from downtown and wrote up a full proposal.

The next night, as we were setting up Bill’s dead-dog party, I pitched him the story.  He said he liked it, and that they had something in the works that it might be a part of (which would become FAIREST; I think he was talking to Lauren Beukes about her arc already at that point).

Steve: Did you come with the pitch already in mind – what was your goal for the story?

Sean: Well, that’s where things get interesting.  So yeah, I had a whole pitch fleshed out, and was bouncing it between Bill and our editor, Shelly Bond, getting feedback and notes and tweaking accordingly.  Then I was in Minnesota that Christmas visiting the in-laws, and I drove down to visit with Bill.  We went to lunch, and he got all serious, and said that he wanted me to write a Prince Charming story too.  Which was great, but Charming’s dead, so it’d all be in flashback.

And who could say no to writing a FABLES Prince Charming story?  Which (spoilers!) was when Bill dropped the bomb that Charming wasn’t dead.  And my mind was blown.   So I reaffirmed that I’d be interested, and ecstatically drove back to the in-laws.  The next time I was able to get a hold of Bill was in March, I think, and I hadn’t heard anything, and I was starting to think the Charming thing was a practical joke, which Bill is known for.

I finally got a hold of him, and he told me it was a good news/bad news situation.  Bad news was that I wasn’t writing my arc as planned.  Good news was that Vertigo wanted the Charming story instead.  I can say this now since it isn’t happening, but my original story focused on Bluebeard, and for some reason Prince Charming is more popular than Bluebeard.  The only problem was that I hadn’t even thought about the Charming story, since I’d been working on Bluebeard for eight months.  So in the span of weeks I had to come up with a whole story for Charming.

The only thing Bill gave me to start with was that Charming had been blown through the gateway, and I had to come up with why he hadn’t been back to Fabletown in the intervening years, and go from there.

Steve: The story is notably set outside of Fablestown, and the American-centric adventures around it. What research did you do to look into the role of Hinduism, and how important was it to you that you set the story in India?

Sean: In thinking about what type of Homeland Charming would be sent to, I threw out a bunch of non-Anglo options.  Japan was the only one I had to stay away from, since Lauren was doing hers there, so the rest of the world was wide open.  I’d been to India a couple of years before, and had enough of a cursory knowledge of Hinduism to know that there was an endless supply of stories to draw from, so I set my focus there.  But unlike a lot of FABLES source material, Hinduism is a religion that’s very much alive today, and I wasn’t comfortable playing around with it willy-nilly.

I reached out to Dean Varun Soni at the University of Southern California (my alma mater) for his input, and (as a practicing Hindu), he walked me through what would be appropriate and what wouldn’t be, which really freed me up creatively.  With that in mind, I dove into reading the epics, looking for characters who would be a good foil for Charming, and revisited Kipling’s stories, which play a huge part too, like Tabaqui, and the Village of the Dead.

Steve: Your lead character, Nalayani, comes from the stories of Hinduism. What about her made her click as a character for you – what drives the original version of her, and what drives your take on the character?

Sean: In her original story, which is told in the MAHABHARATA, she’s described as “one of the five ideal women,” so that checked the “fairest” box off the list.  And what you have to remember is that there is no definitive version of these epics of Hinduism – who the good guy is in the RAMAYANA varies if you’re in the north or the south of India.  So I read a couple of versions of her story, which all centered on how she was married to this leprous sage Maudgalya, and treated him well and tolerated him for years, and he revealed himself to be this paragon and they travelled the world for the rest of their lives enjoying “the five pleasures” (which also checked a box off the list, since it was Charming she’d be partnered up with).

But she was insatiable, and as punishment for her lust, a later incarnation of her has to marry five men.  So the original story is basically “put up with your husband and you’ll be rewarded, but don’t be insatiable or you’ll be punished,” which isn’t exactly the story I wanted to tell, or thought that readers would enjoy.  There’s some of that original story in the arc, – Maudgalya has a cameo, and the leprosy in particular plays a role – but I really dwelled on the idea of “where are the gods?” in the Indu, the Indian Homeland.

Well, of course the Indu was invaded by the Adversary, so that had some effect on the world, as we see, and I realized the gods were gone: this was an alternate universe from the Hinduism people know and practice, and that Nalayani and Maudgalya never married, which changed her whole story completely.  She’s still a caregiver, though, so her whole focus in this arc is saving her village, which has been likewise devastated by the Adversary and all the fallout from the collapse of the Empire.

Steve: You got to work with the creative team of Steve Sadowski, Phil Jimenez and Andrew Dalhouse on the book – quite the team. What did they bring to the storyline, and how do you feel now looking back at the story as a whole?

Sean: As soon as I as saw the first pages Steve and Phil handed in, I knew we needed more animals and more wide shots.  Steve’s animals KILL me, they’re so gorgeous.  There’s a bit I wrote in the third issue that was supposed to be a throwaway beat, but Steve made the animal so alive that it became a crucial moment in the issue for me.  Mugger Ghat (the giant crocodile, from THE JUNGLE BOOK) has a much bigger part because of these guys.

There are several monsters from Hinduism throughout the book that I basically transcribed their descriptions, having NO idea how something like that would look, but Steve blew them all out of the water, and made them believable to boot.  He’s a genius.  And all the textures and tone that Andrew brought to the clothing and the scenery…it’s a gorgeous book.  We were really blessed to have these guys on board.

And, if I can add this, the fact that Todd Klein made a typeface based on Devanagari, the written form of Hindi, just for this arc still blows my mind to this day.

Shelly and Gregory Lockard were amazing editors to work with.  Their instincts were spot on, of course, and they never talked down to me, even though this was my first published comic work (although Shelly did gently chide me at our first lunch when I made the rookie mistake of calling word balloons “word bubbles”).  It’s just been humbling to work with the entire team, and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.  Hopefully the readers feel the same way!

-

Many thanks to Sean for his time! The third arc of Fairest, The Return of the Maharaja’, will be published by Vertigo next week. You can also find Sean online at his website here, and on twitter. 

Fairest, Vol. 1: Wide Awake Bill Willingham

A new spin-off series, this one focusing on the princesses. The main story arc picks up with a character who's been asleep for many, many issues.

Part of Fabletown's plan during the final showdown with the Adversary was putting the Imperial City of sleep with an ancient curse. All Sleeping Beauty had to do was prick her finger and the entire city would fall asleep until she was awoken with true love's kiss.

Enter a Bottle Imp with a master plan, a master thief (Ali Baba), a newly awoken Princess, and a newly awoken Snow Queen. The Snow Queen likes stories, and the Bottle Imp has one-- Sleeping Beauty's.

Y'all know how much I looooooooooove back story. And so much back story! I love how this one ties Sleeping Beauty's backstory with her newly awoken life. I love the mix of the Snow Queen with Ali Baba and the Bottle Imp. I love the look at what true love can mean in different circumstances--it's not always the fairy tale ending we wish for. And oooooo.... all the fairies! A great addition.

I also just really love what Willingham has done with princesses in general in this universe. Snow White is the tough as nails administrator who tamed the Big Bad Wolf. Beauty can't quite fill her shoes, but is no slouch. Cinderella seems all beauty and nice, but is a kick ass spy. Ozma looks like a child, but was able to step into Frau Tottenkinder's roles. So far, Sleeping Beauty has fallen asleep (but was willing to do so when strategically necessary). This one fleshes her out a little more.

And then, something that looks like a fun 50s comic noir, but turns into a SHOCKING revelation about one of our princesses.

I am looking forward to see where this series goes-- it's gotten off to a wonderful start.

Book Provided by... my wallet

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.