Fables Vol. 3: Storybook Love (Fables, 3) - Softcover

Bill Willingham has been writing, and sometimes drawing, comics for more than 20 years. During that time, he's had work published by nearly every comics publisher in the business, and he's created many critically acclaimed comic book series, including Elementals, Coventry, Proposition Players, and of course the seminal Vertigo series Fables, as well as its spin-off series Fairest, Jack of Fables and The Literals. His work has been nominated for many awards, including the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz comic industry awards and the International Horror Guild award. He lives somewhere near a good poker room.

Born in 1966 in the English seaside town of Clevedon, Mark Buckingham has worked in comics professionally for the past twenty years. In addition to illustrating all of Neil Gaiman's run on the post-Alan Moore Miracleman in the early 1990s, Buckingham contributed inks to The Sandman and its related miniseries Death: The High Cost of Living and Death: The Time of Your Life as well as working on various other titles for Vertigo and Marvel through the end of the decade. In 2002 he took over as the penciller for Bill Willingham's Fables, which has gone on to become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed Vertigo titles of the new millennium. When not in Clevedon, Buckingham can be found with his wife Irma in the Asturias region of northern Spain.

One of the stories in this new collection is appropriately titled "Into the Woods." Like Stephen Sondheim's musical, Willingham's series presents figures from childhood fairytales contending with the problems of adult life. Snow White, Briar Rose (aka Sleeping Beauty), Prince Charming, Little Boy Blue and Goldilocks all appear, as does a trickster named Jack. So does the Big Bad Wolf, who is inescapably reminiscent of Marvel's Wolverine. Even Gulliver's Lilliputians turn up, as do talking animals. This volume collects issues 11 through 18, and, as with many contemporary comics, it will be difficult for readers who haven't started with the first issue to get their bearings. The fairytale characters comprise a community of immortals known as "Fables," who now hide in plain sight from the mundane normal people (known as "mundys," they're much like J.K. Rowling's muggles) in a section of New York City called Fabletown. The stories are of two sorts. Two stand-alone tales take place in past centuries and have a genuine fairytale feel and period charm. The others, set in the present, are gritty, with dysfunctional relationships, blackmail and murder attempts. Take the "mature audiences" advisory seriously: this is a book in which an adult Goldilocks can be seen naked or covered with blood. Despite its darker elements, Fables features wit and comedy; Willingham can even make scenes simultaneously farcical and horrific. The art ranges from the illustrative to cartoony, and its variety mirrors the stories' many moods.
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