{"id":686,"date":"2007-12-13T00:05:12","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T00:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=686"},"modified":"2007-12-13T00:05:12","modified_gmt":"2007-12-13T00:05:12","slug":"fables-is-not-very-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=686","title":{"rendered":"Fables is not very good"},"content":{"rendered":"

Right, I’m feeling a bit cranky and unreasonable so it’s time to say something negative. And right now I’m about to dis on something beloved by many: the comic series Fables, by Bill Willingham<\/a>.
\nNow, I was predisposed to like this when it first appeared. I heard good things, and some of my friends liked it a lot. The premise was neat: fairy tale characters hide in the modern world from a mysterious Adversary. The creator, Bill Willingham, had been involved with seminal supers RPG Villains & Vigilantes<\/a>, to boot. And, of course, the Vertigo comic stable was looking a bit thin after the conclusion of Sandman, Preacher and Transmetropolitan.
\nDid I mention this comic was widely praised? Per Wikipedia<\/a>, it has won four Eisner awards, including Best New Series and (three times) Best Serialized Story. It won’t take you much Googling to find enthusiasm for the title throughout the comics blogosphere.
\n(Also, I didn’t have to pay anything to read it, because my brother bought it.)
\nSo, with all signs pointing to a favorable response, I sat down to read the first trade. And I was surprised to mind myself not particularly impressed. Figuring this was when Willingham was still settling in, I stuck with it, and read the next few trades. And I was still not impressed.
\nI have since read almost the entire series. You can’t say I haven’t given it a solid go. Even so, it fails to impress me to this day. In fact, I’ve reached my ultimate conclusion on the matter of Fables: It just isn’t very good.<\/strong>
\nIt isn’t very good because Bill Willingham can’t structure his stories. They are uniformly badly paced, from the movement through the page to the movement through a multi-issue arc. There are many wonderful ideas in this series, and characters change and grow in pleasing ways, but the way the stories are told is so hamfisted and frustrating that I just can’t ignore it. It’s like hearing someone tell a joke who isn’t very good at joke-telling, and they can’t get the rhythm of it right, and they keep leaving bits out or spending too long on bits that don’t turn out to mean anything, and they hammer the punchline really hard and do it slightly wrong as well.
\nThe stories aren’t well-told, and sometimes they aren’t even good stories. Often they are indulgent and clumsy. The gender politics have caused uproar, and the fictional world isn’t remotely plausible even on its own terms.
\nI suppose this is me going all Emperor’s New Clothes on Fables. Despite the massive popular acclaim, it is Not Good Comics. The amassed internets disagree with me, so all I can do is hope that the passage of time will prove me entirely correct. I have complete confidence that it will.
\n(If you like Fables more than I do, feel free to comment and say why Willingham’s storytelling is worth your hardearned money. You’ll be completely wrong, of course, but do feel free.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right, I’m feeling a bit cranky and unreasonable so it’s time to say something negative. And right now I’m about to dis on something beloved by many: the comic series Fables, by Bill Willingham. Now, I was predisposed to like this when it first appeared. I heard good things, and some of my friends liked … Continue reading Fables is not very good<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-b4","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}