By: Mike Carey (story), Peter Gross (art), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Dean Ormston (inks), Chris Chuckry (colors)
The Story: And they all died unhappily ever after.
The Review: Hiya, folks—just filling in for Dean while he’s out of the country. What that, let’s get to it. Like most crossovers, The Unwritten Fables has offered its share of fun, but is mostly overshadowed by sharp deviations from the ongoing plots in its participating series (Fables seems blithely ignorant that a crossover is going on at all). Unfortunately, this arc has also fallen into the trap of quarantining its story so that it has no lasting impact beyond the crossover itself.
Unlike some folks, including perhaps Dean himself, I had no problem with at least the notion of a Fables/Unwritten team-up. The premise itself is sound; Unwritten revolves around the nature of stories, and the Fables have an awareness of their fictional nature and their place in the story-worlds that fits very well in Unwritten’s explorations. The problem is the plot quickly became less about metafiction and more about a fruitless battle against the embodiment of all evil.
In the process, Fables fans are forced to endure the indignity of watching their favorite characters either senselessly mowed down or descend into savagery: Ambrose giving in to his bloodthirst, Bigby slaying his entire family, Boy Blue and Riding Hood turned evil, various other characters deformed, stabbed, obliterated. It’s of little comfort that none of these events have any permanent effect; it’s simply an unhappy experience to see the Fables subjected to such fates for any reason.
In many ways, the Fables are mostly fodder to fill the time until the story can reach its ultimate revelations. Plotlines that seemed important turn out to have little to no overarching purpose at all. Even the duel between Boy Blue and Tom is brief and artificial, lacking any real violent intent, a mere formality to ensure Frau Totenkinder’s plan to defeat Mr. Dark comes to pass. In that sense, even Tom is simply an instrument rather than an active player in the story, not unlike the horn he uses to bring the story to its utter close.
Despite the earthshattering circumstances of the arc’s conclusion, the revelations they bring about are far less so, though interesting in their own way. Totenkinder does seem to pin down Tom’s exact nature, which has always been a little ambiguous: “A man was your father, Tom Taylor. A woman was your mother. But a word was your midwife.” Tom’s connections to Leviathan notwithstanding, he is also a “vehicle” for the stories his father wrote on his behalf, which explains how in his hands, a plastic wand can cast real spells, a horn can wreak destruction upon an entire world, and he himself can transform into a bespectacled boy-mage.
There’s also a bit of poetry to the way Carey finishes out the story, though it takes a bit of extrapolation on your part to appreciate it. As cruel as their ends may be, the Fables ultimately choose to accept death on their own terms rather than allow their stories to be twisted beyond their control. Totenkinder’s consumption of the world’s children, the purest source of stories, empowers her to become a proto-goddess of witches to stave off an even more nightmarish legend. We learn that what we see as reality may simply be yet another story in Leviathan’s vast body, and that “the story ends when the world ends.” Profound thoughts, but perhaps only because you force yourself to find them.
Although both Gross and Buckingham are well-qualified artists, especially for Vertigo’s purposes, neither produce barnburning art. That said, Gross in particular impresses this issue with fairly energetic visuals, far more than what he usually produces on a typical Unwritten script, and the issue as a whole is appropriately grisly and stark.
Conclusion: A fine ending to a mostly unnecessary crossover, but one that leaves little lasting impact on the series as a whole.
Grade: C+
-Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – Poor Stinky. Must be pretty rough, cultishly hoping for your friend’s resurrection and salvation, only for him to stab you through the heart.
Grade
Conclusion