Do Princesses Dream of Talking Sheep?
Ah, we all love fairy tales. Most of us grew up with them in the form of Disney movies rather than the original, but no one can deny how they’ve shaped our culture. For example, we refer to someone who has spent half the day asleep as a “Sleeping Beauty”, or a chivalrous man coming to the rescue as a “knight in shining armor”. Most of us get to a certain point in our lives where we no longer care for fairy tales (unless you choose to have kids), as we deem them too immature or idealistic for our palates. Even if we forget that many of the original fairy tales were quite dark, this could still be further from the truth.
One of my favourite modern adaptations of the classic fairy tales comes from the world of comics. DC Vertigo is a comic books line aimed at older audiences. Some of it’s most popular series include The Sandman, Hellblazer, Lucifer, Preacher, Watchmen, and Fables, the latter of which I’ll be talking about today.
The premise is simple: centuries ago, the characters from fairy tales and folklore, collectively known as Fables, were driven out of their homelands by a mysterious villain known as “The Adversary”. Now, the surviving Fables live in a little community in NYC called “Fabletown”. The outside world is unaware of their existence, and Fabletown acts as an independent nation, surviving on the scraps given by its more wealthy inhabitants.
If that isn’t intriguing enough, the entire first volume is a murder mystery. Rose Red, the sister of Snow White (who’s the assistant mayor of Fabletown), has been the victim of a grisly crime. Snow enlists the help of Bigby Wolf, the sheriff of Fabletown, to find her sister’s killer. It's an engaging story with a fantastic plot twist at the end, and has just the right amount of whimsy mixed in with the gritty realism.
Let me be clear: this series is not meant for everyone. It is quite raw and crude in places, and deals with very mature themes. That being said, if you are interested in this, you should definitely check it out.
That is very interesting. I grew up watching the Disney versions, however I have not heard much about the originals. They sound a lot different compared to the fairy tales most of us are familiar with.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds really cool. I love reading, but I have never really gotten into comic books. I'd rather visualize the setting and characters in my head, than actually see them. I always found the original fairy tales to be very interesting. I find myself wondering why someone would read the original stories and think. "wow these would be great for kids," it somehow worked out though. I've never heard of DC vertigo before but that sounds like a very interesting plot.
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