Review: Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love
Cinderella From Fabletown with Love just finished its 6 issue run. The Doctor Who ads feature a different Doctor on its first issue than its last, and we leave the Fables spinoff with a richer knowing of its femme fatale, Cinderella. The six-issue run dug into her exploits as an international spy, sneaking and killing in the name of Mundy protection while she parades as a prissy self-proclaimed "gadabout". It's a comic that kills and swears yet seamlessly switches back to scenes in a pink-wallpapered shoe shop, and I'm so glad to have followed it through.
While Cindy gets busy taking tracking down the tiered players of a magical-artifact trafficking ring, we're taken back to The Glass Slipper in Fabletown, where her assistant shows us the dire effects of misused enchanted objects. In the end, it's a light reprieve from Cindy's action, a glimmer of fun whenever the main plot pits too many guns against magic wands. It's relevant but never carries any weight, and gets quickly resolved within the final issue.
The meat of the adventure comes from this memorable rendition of Cinderella, whose espionage takes her from Baghdad to the Arctic Circle and deep into mystical territory as she takes down the magical black market. We're taken on James Bond missions into the imagination, and Shawn McMAnus' art helps to keep it memorable; Each location is painted distinctively by its actors, be it by Aladdin's D'Jinn or Ultima Thule's gun-toting polar bears. The soft penciling works well on the paper and absorbs the colorwork that's often bright, not even drab in its grays and blacks.
Cindy and Aladdin are great foils to one another, they're built by rags to riches stories, so their relationship has moments of sympathy, yet their hard-boiled characters often butt heads and keep conflict coming, enriching their chemistry. Roberson invests in his characters' histories and how elements from their past affect them, he makes Cinderella's tenure as a spy equally as important as her ancient reign as on the arm of Prince Charming. The Fables setting allows the author access to a large continuity, without having to worry if the reference is too irrelevant or obscure. This open craftsmanship is what really sells the main Fables line for me, it makes me look forward to reading it.
Past meets present recurrently in this tale, which loves to play with its varied settings. From the opening scene echoing Cinderella's midnight predicament, to the flashbacks that open every subsequent issue, there's a clash with the old-fashioned found within the details. Aladdin's traded his two genies for a private jet and yacht, Sinbad's harems argue about modern female enslavement, and Cindy deals with the fallout from her original-well-known fable. This lends to the theme of happily-ever-after, which appears prominently in the resolution and manages to bleed into the details of the earlier issues upon rereading.
The end of Cindy's mission wraps things up well, her main opponent elevates what's at stake to a grander level and provides her with a chance to find closure. Having a villain from Cinderalla's past also helps to divide to series into separate, intertwining acts, as the earlier issues saw her partner Aladdin grapple with operatives from within his own mythology. Roberson's script is well thought-out from the get-go, and for all six issues consistently balances comedic dialogue with a strong, sassy female lead. I loved this comic. Prospective girl readers could definitely get turned on to comics through this. James Bond buffs could get into this. You should already gotten into it.
Rubber Justice
Posted to Review on 8 April 2010
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: cinderella, Fables, mcmanus, roberson, shoe stores, vertigo
This is good, and its over 6, means more detail in each one right. Either way it sounds good.