In what seems to be becoming a tradition for Fables, Willingham takes a break from the modern day stories to indulge in a bit of flashback that fleshes out his world, telling stories set in the Homelands that have ramifications into the modern day of Fabletown. The tradition also seems to hold that these stories are illustrated by guest artists, and this issue's guest artist is Linda Medley, who is probably best known for her coloring work but who should be best known for her own "what happens after happily ever after?" tales of Castle Waiting. Medley's art is perfectly suited to Willingham's charming flashback tale of a Lilliputian adventurer, although not quite as suited to the framing sequences, and while this doesn't really represent the best of the Fables stories thus far, it is a self-contained story that curious new readers might want to check out.
It becomes clear, in reading Fables, that Willingham is like Neil Gaiman in that he has a seemingly endless variety of stories that he can tell within the framework he's created. Beyond stories of folklore characters in the modern day, he's got a tapestry to weave of how that modern day setting came to pass, not to mention further adventures in the Homelands that are essentially sequels to the fairy tales. This particular tale explores an offshoot of The Farm, the small village that is home to the Lilliputians of Gulliver's Travels, as Willingham explains how they came over from the Homelands and some of the unusual stories that led to their current existence.
True to form for Willingham, this story contains imaginative combinations of legends (in this case, characters from Gulliver's Travels and Thumbellina), a clever sense of humor with an adult but not bawdy sensibility and some interesting lead characters. Willingham's tale is set up to explain a modern day village Fabletown, but in explaining all of that, it touches upon a group of heroes who became the foundation for that village and a smaller group of heroes who went on an adventure to help the village survive. It's kind of neat how Willingham, in crafting one story being told by Bigby Wolf, actually tells about three or four different tales of adventure.
Much of this story takes place in the Homelands, or in an area of Fabletown that is styled to look like the old world of the Homelands. It is here where Medley's work shines, as she's done a fair bit of research and prior work on a sort of medieval/fantasy setting, and her cartoonish style is perfect for talking animals, pint-sized heroes and exotic lands of magic and legend. The moments of the story that take place in modern-day Fabletown, or indeed a brief flash of 1800s Fabletown, are a bit jarring, since a more realistic style is what I've come to expect from those segments, but the majority of the artwork is perfectly suited to this tale, and has the same inviting charm and imagination as the story.
Fables, like Sandman or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, is a story about prior stories, showing that some of the more enduring characters in fiction don't necessarily end their lives when the author ends the books. Willingham and his artists have blended the universal appeal of these long-standing characters with a modern sensibility and a sort of cross-continuity that lets us view these old favorites in a new context.
