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

[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. ;)