Comics: Fables: Frau Totenkinder (Hint: SHE IS AMAZING)

[beccatoria]

I am finally caught up with Fables. Holy fuckballs. So I looked up the author and yes, I was right to suspect the guy is a staunch political conservative. It's...actually incredibly interesting knowing I was right about that not least because it means that the following sequence of facts, that I am convinced are all utterly intentional, are suddenly about a million percent more fascinating in terms of authorial choice:

a) I'm certain the rare but fairly blatant arguments against abortion in this comic are intentional and reflective of the author's beliefs.

b) No one can convince me it's coincidence that the war against the Adversary basically shakes out as a thematic duel between Gepetto and Frau Totenkinder - between the man whose chief source of power are the infinite children he carves from his magic grove, and the woman whose magic is powered by the deaths of children, whose name means Mrs Deadchildren, who sacrificed her own firstborn child in exchange for survival, and who, in modern times, it's heavily implied, remains within the law by funding abortion clinics. It is LITERALLY a war of Infinite Babies vs. Abortion.

c) And yet - Mrs Deadkids is the good guys' champion. She's the one we're rooting for. No one can convince me that's a coincidence or an accident either, but it is...complicated and wonderful and completely not what I was expecting from the guy who kept dropping gentle hints about his political orientation.

NGL, this comic bugs me sometimes with its heteronormativity in a genre that would be just perfect for queerness of all sorts, but I forgive a lot for Frau Totenkinder. She's amazing. And complicated. And powerful. And heroic. And morally ambiguous. And murderous. And dangerous. And loyal. And utterly unapologetic about who she is and what she's done and what she's going to do and what she never will.

She defies an empire because a young woman was once kind to her when she was in pain. She brings a god of fear to his knees to prove she can, and when she cannot kill him, she shrugs and smiles, and says, I'm done now, and leaves for a new life, and a new beginning. She moves backwards through the phases of her life; it's time to be young, and terrifying, once more.

YOU GUISE. I JUST. FRAU TOTENKINDER. I LIKE HER A LOT.


This is the sequence where she decides to leave her people, leave her disguises, once more awaken her full potential, and go to war against a god. Sorry it's so long, but I feel the whole sequence needs to be seen to understand its impact. It's so wonderfully...primal. Even the gingerbread house.













It's a really interesting series. Some of the stuff in it bugs me; some is incredible. I'd like to make this into a series of posts, but we'll see if I feel I have anything else worth saying.

Have any of you read this series?

Comments

[mymatedave.livejournal.com]

Yes, I read it regularly and totally didn't see that comparison. Probably because here in England we don't have the same type of crazies as your religious vagina obsessed fundies.

Sorry to talk about US politics rather than comics, but it's always relieving to know that there are conservatives in america that aren't a paradoxical mix of anarcho-capitalist christianist advocates of military adventurism, which a lot of the right in america that we see over here appear to be.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Dude I'm Welsh. I live in Wales. ;)

My Ma is from the US, though, so I do keep up a bit more with US politics, and yes I agree that we have less public arguments about abortion, although we do have them, they just tend to be based in social class shaming rather than religious shaming, but at least it's not usually about whether they should even exist.

I do think that in the UK we have our own toxic types of right wing bullshit, but you're right, this one specific issue is more of a US thing.

That said, I think I would have noticed it anyway, even if I wasn't so aware of american politics on the issue, the thematic inversion is too perfect not to be intentional. I just might not have twigged it as something so metatextually noteworthy rather than an interesting literary device purely within the story.

Having said that, I'm usually the postergirl for not noticing obvious shit other people point out to me later, especially thematics-wise, so I empathise. ;)

And agree that it's always nice when you find someone you totally disagree with but can still appreciate. I really don't know anything like enough about Bill Willingham's politics and personality to know what I would think of him as a human, but I am very much enjoying his comic series, even if I occasionally roll my eyes slightly at metaphors about Israel. At least for the most part, those metaphors are things I can actually see Bigby Wolf saying.

[mymatedave.livejournal.com]

if you've mentioned that you're Welsh before I'm sorry, but most of the people who comment on tv and comics on LJ are American, but that's the english-speaking internet for you. And you're right about Bigby, it does seem like something he would say.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Ah, it does come up semi-regularly, but not generally in the same posts as fandom stuff, which I imagine are the ones you're actually interested in. ;) No worries! :)

ETA: Although, ridiculously, I JUST made a post that is about Wales/Fandom. *facepalm* WEIRD TOTAL COINCIDENCE. ;)

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

Wow, I've never seen a gingerbread house with a clitoris before. I wonder if my local library system has this.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Ahahahaha, I know.

My local library system has them all except the most recent (there are like 17 volumes), but my local library system has always been reasonably good about their graphic novel section; I'm not sure if that's unusual or not? (Everytime I've been living away from my current location I haven't really been on any kind of reading or library-related binge). (Um to clarify how one could be on a non-reading related library binge, I went through a period as a teenager of being obsessed with renting out stuff from their movie section and trying to get into anime, which didn't really stick, and I blame the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion entirely!)

I do recommend this series with the caveat that it's fairly obvious in places that it's written by a social conservative. At times - like the above - that makes it utterly fascinating. At times, it's been slightly more annoying, but so far never out of balance with the enjoyment I get from the series. Like I vaguely touched on, it's also not stellar on some representational issues even though the allegorical nature of fairytales would make it fairly easy to include, but I figure I should just mention that again so you're aware it going in if you decide to give it a try.

Oh, another thing to mention - the main series is called Fables and has been collected in handily numbered graphic novel format, then there was a spin-off called Jack of Fables based on the character of, well, Jack (the Giant Killer). I have read that too, but...to be honest I didn't think it was a patch on the main series, and I didn't like what they did with the mythology of the world in it. But you might come across that too if you go looking at your library. That ran until recently and I think has all been released as collections now. It ran for about 10 volumes? You don't really need to read it to read Fables, though, they're pretty separate.

There are also three other standalone graphic novels that aren't numbered, two about Cinderella and one called 1001 Nights of Snowfall which is a bunch of different stories in a framing device. I liked these, but again you don't have to read them, I mostly mention it in case you go looking in your library, see them, and get confused.

...why do comics always sound so confusing?! ;)

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

I've been around in comics fandom long enough to see various people who love Fables having ranty moments about aspects of Wilmingham's writing. I didn't know the art was so much to my taste though (although I have quite wide taste in comic art and only rly dislike the obviously 'shopped porn school of "art". Thanks for the quick continuity lesson. That's very handy. Although, having been trained from toddlerhood on Doctor Who, even X-Men continuity failed to confuse me! I suspect my local library won't have fables although the system might. Or perhaps it'd be worth inter-librarying 1001 Nights of Snowfall as that's a stand-alone.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

No problem! And since I actually don't know anyone else who reads Fables (weird, huh?) I didn't know and am relieved to hear that my reaction to the author is not unique!

The art above is from the series' regular artist - he handles almost all of the major arcs, usually a guest artist then handles a few issues, or shorter arc, before this guy takes over again. Over the course of the series he's really created a great visual style with the borders and the way he makes it almost like a storybook image, though it takes him a while to refine it. Even the fill-in stuff, though, is, fortunately, not of the 'shopped porn variety. ;)

1001 Nights of Snowfall might be a good place to start because as you say, it's a standalone; it's also got a really wide variety of art because the different stories are all illustrated by different people. But I would say that ultimately I think I got more out of it by reading it later on because a lot of the stories are actually backstories of various characters (Actually including Frau Totenkinder). That said, if I'd read it first, I might have had the reverse reaction and been like, "Oh, it's that guy!" when reading the series proper. So...that was probably spectacularly unhelpful! Just wanted you to know what it was and also that it's not so much based on sweeping, epic plot so much as a series of shorter tales set within the universe (and also set in the past - back when they were all still living in fairytale land, not the real world).

Also, yay for being impervious to continuity insanity. Sometimes I forget that geeks are good for that. ;)

[prozacpark.livejournal.com]

Every time I go without reading comics for a bit, I have to learn to read them. I read this the first time and didn't get much out of it. And then I realized that I had skipped from textbox to textbox, without actually looking at PICTURES. And, oh, oh, she's casting a youth spell. Hmm.

This is a huge reason why I just...never read author interviews and try as much as I can to avoid knowing anything about the authors (now, if the writers could meet me halfway and just not...let their problematic issues drip into canon, sigh.) So things like this could keep me guessing forever. But BSG has made me bitter, and I feel that even IF the text is playing with interesting/controversial ideas, it will just FAIL in the end and just side with conventionality. Which...kind of really makes me wish that "Fables" were more an open canon where other writers could contribute? That would make me insanely happy.

BUT. I am reading some things in this that...I want to comment on, but clearly, I can't do that without having more of the context. ;) I have the first few tpbs and the graphic, which I can reread for the Totenkinder stuff, but which arcs/issues would you recommend after issue 50ish to read for that? Don't worry about researching this if you can't remember off the top of your head. I'll look for it over the weekend anyway.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Yes - I also find after a while away from comics I have to get back into the rhythm of it.

But BSG has made me bitter, and I feel that even IF the text is playing with interesting/controversial ideas, it will just FAIL in the end and just side with conventionality.

Oh my god the list of ways in which BSG has still got me jaded is...a long list.

And I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't at all nervous. Also I think that I wrote this kind of in a fit of excitement after I read it all and while I stand by what I wrote and how much I love this part of the story, I do confess to being increasingly uneasy when considering where it might go from here. And I'm genuinely not sure how much of that is due to stuff like BSG bitterness and how much due to a rational fear that the political aspects of the author's style will bother me (given that so far I've been pretty much okay with ignoring them when I feel like it).

One good thing, though, is that for the moment at least, Totenkinder has left the main narrative. She goes away at the end of #100, and while she comes back briefly about seven or eight issues later, it's hard to describe without spoilers, but it's basically a cameo away from the main cast, and she heads off again.

With regards to Fables being a more open canon, I have some hopes that the most recent spin-off - Fairest - which launched this month, may help address that. The initial arc is being written by Willingham, and I'm sure he'll be approving arcs after that, but they will actually be written by rotating guest writers. The second arc (which I think will start with issue...7 or 8?) is going to be about Rapunzel, but set in Japan and featuring some Japanese fables, and written by Lauren Beukes, about whom I know nothing, but seems to be a respected novelist. And I believe that the third arc will be set in India about an Indian fable, although now I'm struggling to find the source of that article to confirm. But I think I read that. Fairest is also going to be focusing on a rotating cast of female characters. So like, that isn't a guarantee of improvement, necessarily, but it's at least potentially interesting and I agree that an opening of the Fables world would be very interesting (although I don't think I'd ever want to see it become as large and sprawling and repetitive as the DCU, but that's really comparing apples to oranges.)

Finally! The story I'm discussing above takes place mostly in the trades Witches and Rose Red. The last issue in Rose Red is #100 which is more-or-less the end of the arc I'm discussing (except for the cameo mentioned above). I have no idea how easy it'll be to jump in if you've been on a break since #50 (I think Witches starts in the mid-eighties?), since I read it so quickly I can't remember all the milestones between but if you're not worried about picking it up as you go along, then those are the two books you want.

Finally, and I shall try to say this with as few spoilers as possible, I feel I should warn you that part of her story at the end is that she does decide to go off and get married and, as she casually puts it at one point when being abstract, "have a romance," which I was actually fine with because she pretty much outranks her dude in every possible way and he knows that and isn't intimidated or jealous. But given your precarious relationship with the series, I thought it might be best to warn you that her story arguably ends with her running off with a dude to find happiness.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Argh! It just occurred to me that I was focusing on the Totenkinder arc with regards to her fight with Mister Dark, rather than her role in the end of the war, which obviously takes place between #50 and #75. Having said that, while there's a lot of interesting information about her - I believe this is the place where she asserts the entire situation is a duel between herself and Gepetto and where, in a discussion with Kay, she acknowledges that bleeding a little blood from each newborn Fable is nowhere near enough power to make her as capable as she is and Kay implies that she funds abortion clinics, and where we find out stuff like how she has her own network of unwitting spies in the Homelands - I don't recall her being the focus so much as she is in Witches and Rose Red (or at least sort of; she's a bit more in the background for the Rose Red arc, but then that trade also includes the 100 page issue 100 which is the conclusion of Totenkinder's story). She was more just...there in the background and would sometimes get interesting scenes or provide interesting information.

So if you want to read that stuff I feel a bit less confident reccing the issues to you and internet investigation is probably the way to go! :)