Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The war is over, the battles, at great cost, have been won and the exiled fables have been saved in part to the heroics of Bibgy Wolf, Prince Charming and Boy Blue, yet deep down, even with Geppetto being captured and the puppet adversary finally succumbing to overwhelming odds, the reader and fan of Bill Willingham’s highly delightful fantasy graphic novels knows that the real test is still to come and that Fables: War and Pieces is only the end of the beginning.

In years gone past such an ending to what has been a terrific arc of books and some seriously entertaining story lines would have seen the graphic novel series end there, in time honoured tradition of the heroes winning through and the world being set to rights, balance restored and to be fair ideas having been over stretched and perhaps declining sales figures hampering the ideal of what was an otherwise very entertaining premise. Not so for Bill Willlingham, for in the world of the fantasy and the fairy tale being subverted and distorted, nothing is impossible, for the structure of the timeless classic is there to be manipulated and moulded into another shape and form and Bill Willingham does it so well.

There is much to take from the Fables graphic novels, much in which perhaps as adults we forget, possibly because we must in which to function in a world run on seemingly relentless logic, so many lessons in the act of chivalry and forgiveness, even to those that have tried to destroy you, that come through the pages of each book, but especially in War and Pieces.

The criticisms of such work will always come riding alongside the plaudits, it is only natural. Too twee an ending perhaps, not demanding enough of its readers that may have expected more in a conclusive story line, all such comments are to be treated with disdain. The fortitude of the writer to stick to his convictions is to be applauded. Fairy tales are there to serve as both warning and an instrument of installing moral fortitude, to know the difference between dark and light and every spectrum of shade between.

By placing the reader into a world of the fairy tale, Bill Willingham has a sense of duty to explain that whilst not everything in the world is rosy or as clean as we would like, it is a world that could be so much worse, Utopia is but a distant and almost unobtainable achievement, dystopia is only one act of humanity away from being real after all.

War and Pieces is a classic end to what has been a tremendous story arc, deep down though, the reader will know that dystopia will always rear its ugly head.

Fables: War and Pieces is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Line Street, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall