anderswolleck

Fables is a wonderful book and has been at the forefront of the new age of Vertigo books along with Y: The Last Man and 100 Bullets. Created by comic book veteran Bill Willingham, Fables takes all your favorite classic fairytale characters and explains what they are up in the 21st century. The ones that can pass for human, live in the cities and are ruled by Prince Charming and his sheriff, Beast. The characters that are talking animals or mythical creatures live in Fabletown far away from prying eyes. Fables started out simply with the suspicious death of Rose Red and has built on many foundations to create a unique and truly compelling story. The latest trade paperback reveals many of the great mysteries of the Fables universe.

*spoilers within unless you are up to date with Fables

Buy Fables Vol. 6: Homelands

Daniel Robert Epstein: Did you know from the beginning who the adversary was in Fables?

Bill Willingham: Mostly. We did before the first issue shipped. My first plan for the adversary was going to be Peter Pan. But we found out that even though Peter Pan is in public domain here, because of the hospital situation in England, its not in public domain there.

DRE: What is the hospital situation?

BW: [Peter Pan creator] J.M. Barrie used to work with this childrens hospital and in his will he willed all the royalties for all Peter Pan related projects to go to this hospital. Even though it shouldve gone into public domain, the English Parliament did a special exception to the rule so that this hospital could continue to receive the benefits of Peter Pan royalty. Because of that, its not really in public domain over there.

DRE: So they ruined Fables.

BW: Yeah, they ruined a great book just to save the life of a few damned dying kids. Where are their priorities?

So we couldnt use Peter Pan and still sell books in England. I was also talking to [former President and Editor-in-chief of DC Comics] Jenette Kahn and Lisa Henson at Henson Pictures and they were trying to come up with a different adversary and thats where we came up with the Geppetto idea. There was some changing of minds, but not before the series actually began.

DRE: Its funny, because there is going to be a revisionist Peter Pan movie.

BW: Theres another new Peter Pan project? There were about eight or nine of them at one time. Whats the new one?

DRE: Its a horror movie. Peter Pans characters a villain being tracked by a police captain named Hook.

BW: Really? That was very much the take I was going to do. Captain Hook was going to be a good guy, whos called a pirate by Peter Pan but he just keeps running rescue missions into Neverland to retrieve all these kids that Peter Pan keeps taking. Is that the take theyve got on it?

DRE: It very well could be. It literally just came out last night or two nights ago.

BW: Ill be damned.

DRE: Its a New Line project, which is owned by Time Warner which also owns DC Comics.

BW: Thats interesting. I hope it comes out. Better luck to them with big movie and all that behind it, theres probably more clout to tell England to take it or leave it.

DRE: Ive been reading Fables since the first trade paperback came out. Its interesting to see how seamless the way these characters fit in your stories. Does that ever surprise you?

BW: When things come together, it is very nice. Certain things look like I was planning them all along but some were, some werent. I like it when people assume that Im much cleverer and well read than I am and I encourage that.

DRE: Theres a lot of fairytales out there. Are you constantly looking for new ones to deal with?

BW: Oh yeah, since Fables has come out, I get to justify all my reading time as research and I dont feel nearly so guilty. It used to be that I would be reading that stuff when I should be working. The excuse to read lots of fables and folklores is just one of the many benefits of doing this series.

DRE: The Brothers Grimm was originally published in German; do you ever find that something written in the original language has aspects that dont translate to English?

BW: Sure. One good example of that is theres two German fairytales using Snow White. Theres Snow White and Rose Red and theres the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. In English, both of the names of those characters translate as Snow White, which is why I decided to make them the same character. But in the German, they did not have the same name even though both characters would translate. They were not intended to be the same person, but happy accident or whatever it turns out that they are so now I can make the background of each character richer.

DRE: Was the Jack in Hollywood storyline inspired by any of your Hollywood experiences?

BW: I have yet to write my screenplay and all of my Hollywood friends are very ashamed of me for that. Every waiter in town has written his screenplay and I still havent gotten around to it. With that said, a lot of the fun with that particular story grew out of just finding my way around Hollywood. Even before Fables started, there was some movie interest in it because Jenette Kahn, who now has her own production company, was quite interested in the series. The Hollywood Jack story is well informed by my fun with the Hollywood experience.

DRE: Have you met people like Jacks underling Fox Waterhouse?

BW: What really disappointed me about the Hollywood experience was I kept expecting to meet folks like that. The ones I met in person were so polite and attentive. That may be because I really only dealt with Henson Pictures and Lisa Henson who had read the books and loved them. They were all very good to me. There was no one that told me the standard, Youll never work in this town again, kid or whatever. Even the traffic wasnt bad so all the clichs of Hollywood were ruined for me. Now there were a few experiences when the buzz was getting around that Fables might be available for movies and I was getting lots of cold calls from different studios to see if the rights are available. Some producer called me out of the blue and was in the middle of a conversation, which had obviously started before he picked up the phone because his opening line was something like, Explain to me how a movie like Fables will make me feel like I did when I came out of Toy Story. That was even before, Hello. How are you? This is who I am. That flummoxed me. How did you feel when you came out of Toy Story? I dont know anything about you. Maybe youre some raging psychopath. How does one answer that question, especially as an opening remark? There were a few calls like that. Somebody called from some small studio when Fables had gotten optioned by Warner Bros and just screamed in the phone, I couldve gotten you a million dollars. He said that three or four times and then hung up on me.

DRE: Those are moments you can tell people at parties.

BW: Yeah. But as far as my personal experience in Hollywood, I had to be a little meaner in the Jack story than what actually happened to me. Nobody wants to believe a kind and caring Hollywood. I mean come on.

DRE: I read about the Jack ongoing series, was that something you always wanted to do or was it someone elses idea?

BW: After the Hollywood Jack story, we were going to keep Jack separate from Fabletown. As a matter of fact, I think the last line was, He was never seen in Fabletown again. In the regular Fable series, every once in awhile, we would see whats up with Jack. I think it was [Vertigo editor] Shelley Bond who called me and said, Now that Jacks out on his own, would you be interested in spinning it off? I thought about it and said, Yes as long as I can work with someone else so that theres a different viewpoint so it wont be Fables and Fables Light.

So I teamed up with a fellow named Matthew Sturges who is one of my favorite unknown authors. He really has this wicked sense of humor, which is what you need when you do a Jack series.

DRE: Will Jacks story end up being integral to whatever Fables is leading up to?

BW: It will eventually. It fits in with the very long range plan. I sort of have things divided into whats happening real quickly, whats happening in a little bit and whats happening in the grand, long range scheme of things. The first year or so of Jack, we want to keep him very separate from the other storylines to establish him on his own. We need to find out whether he can or cant carry a series by himself. But in the long run, there are characters introduced in Jack that have not appeared in the regular Fables series yet and probably shouldve. Letter writers are constantly asking, where are the American fairytales like Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill? Early on in the Jack series, we find out what happened to those particular characters. Its hopefully very disturbing and has repercussions for Fabletown right away, even though the Fabletowns not going to know about it for awhile.

DRE: Youve been creating comics since 1983. It took a long time for you to do a creator-owned series, why is that?

BW: When I started in comics with some of the independent companies like Comico, it was very easy to get a series started. It was along the lines of a 15-minute conversation. That was it. The deal was made. Even while I was starting with books like The Elementals, I was talking to the DC people. But DC and Marvel did not make any decision quickly. A friend of mine started pitching a series about 1982 and finally got it accepted somewhere around 1990. Eight years of meetings and revisions to convince DC that they wanted to do this book. Eight years is a long time to keep interested in a funny book project. I tried a few things at DC as well and the enthusiasm died after about the third or fourth or fifth month of just one meeting after another.

For years, I would occasionally do fill-in issues of this and that with DC, but I thought the idea of pitching a new series to them was ridiculous because the moment I have an idea, I want to start working on it the same day and you just cant do that with them. Then about five years ago, Shelley Bond called me out of the blue and said, Pitch something to Vertigo. I gave her that whole speech and she promised me a decision in 30 days. I pitched something just to call her bluff. I didnt think they could do it but they did. There had been some changes in DC over the years while I wasnt looking because now they can make decisions without years of second guessing. So really the delay in coming up with a creator-owned project with DC is that I didnt think they were capable of doing it.

DRE: What are the benefits of being a hot creator?

BW: Its exactly like being a nobody except now people want me to do more conventions and signings. We dont get groupies in the comic industry. We dont get fabulous fame and riches, so mostly its just being a little busier than I was before. Not bad.

DRE: But Fables is the kind of book that could get groupies.

BW: Apparently comic shop owners get groupies. We dont. Its like if the record store owners would be the ones with women trying to sleep with them. I dont understand it, but its the topsy-turvy world we live in. The only real advantage of it besides getting regular work is that I think publishers are a little more inclined to trust that I might have a good idea from time to time.

DRE: Also your fan base has changed. Fables attracts a lot of women readers.

BW: Quite often the commentary I get is I showed this to my girlfriend who wont read comics and now she understands why I like comics or even I showed this to my parents and now theyre fans because now they finally understand why I think these are can be great fun or great literature. Lots of wives and girlfriends and moms and dads and even some women are finding the book on their own. Its nice that funny books arent completely limited to one entire gender.

DRE: Besides the fact that Fables is a good book and women can enjoy it, is it the Neil Gaiman type factor of grown up fairytales?

BW: I always thought part of Neils appeal was that hes just such a damn pretty guy. But me, not so much. I think the subject matter lends itself to that. Its about lovely maidens and handsome princes. For todays audience we can poke holes in that and I think that appeals to folks. We cant afford real research into what our readership and audience breaks down to. But anecdotally, it looks like perhaps a good half of the readership is female, which is nice.

DRE: Did you always read fairytales?

BW: Yeah, at least as long as I can remember. My first real memory about becoming very interested in fairytales was Fractured Fairytales on The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show. They would take stories and turn them on their noses. As a kid, I couldnt understand how they could get away with that. I assumed that everything was sort of government regulated or monitored or there was someone in control of everything. That got me interested in the whole idea of anyone being allowed to tell those stories.

DRE: There were two Peter Pan movies a few years ago. Is there any reason for people to keep telling the same stories or should people come up with new ones?

BW: I think the answer is yes to both of those. Peter Pan was obviously so captivating a story because we do have people wanting to tell it over and over again. There are good and not so good results. Hook [directed by Steven Spielberg] was just horrible. It was a terrible revisitation of that material. But then there was another Peter Pan movie within the last few years [directed by P.J. Hogan] that was terrific. So why not keep doing that over and over? Unfortunately you have to wade through the crap to get to the good because theres no way to chemically measure the goodness in something.

DRE: When is the hardcover Fables: 1001 Nights Of Snowfall coming out?

BW: I believe its the second ship week in October [2006]. Its a ways away mostly because were giving each of the artists that worked on it as long a deadline as possible. The thing is entirely written, but were at the point now where Im getting all this wonderful artwork from a really eclectic and diverse set of artists.

DRE: Is it part of Fables continuity?

BW: Once again the answer is yes and no. It is a bunch of stories about the backgrounds of key characters. Some of them are the defining moments. Such as why does Snow hate any mention of the dwarves? What happened to Flycatchers wife and kids back in the homelands, that they didnt get out and he did? What was the incident that caused them to elect King Cole as their mayor and keep him in that job for hundreds of years before Prince Charming came along and ruined it? The key past moments in each character. In that sense, its going to be very important and in another sense, there are lots of stories I want to get to in the regular series that I cant until the readers know these bits of information. There are a lot of stories Im sitting on that will start coming out once the original graphic novel is out.

DRE: How did you discover SuicideGirls?

BW: One of the girls, named Perdita Suicide, was posting on my forum and one of the things I like is for people to use their real names. She explained, Well this is an official stage name and she explained the whole SuicideGirl thing to me. I went and visited and said, All right. This is like a legitimate operation and its pretty nice.

DRE: Its a good chunk of your audience.

BW: It is. Im enough of an old fuddy duddy that the new trend of lots of tattoos and lots of piercings is probably not my cup of tea for old fuddy duddy reasons. For one, why put bad art on good skin? The other is all this face shrapnel and stuff, back in my day that only occurred when a buddy threw himself on a grenade to save your life. Now people are throwing lots of grenades apparently because all of these poor lovely women are ending up with bits of shrapnel all over them. But that aside, its a fun site. What a weird mix of serious journalism and naughty girl shots. The Playboy of its generation.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck