Fables 144 ~Yeaaah, this is getting gruesome fast~

[ozaline]

Getting caught up on my pull list, just finished getting caught up on Fables.

When last we left off, Ozma and Beast separately made plans to revive their super hero personae so that they could take on Bigby who is being controlled by Ms. Douglas. Ozma had determined that Bigby must be slain...

















I didn't care too much for this version of Ozma, but I feel she deserved a better end then this... The entire superhero team was supposed to be fearless to start with. Bigby wasn't allowed on the team for the reason that he did have fear that Mr. Dark could play on, but Ozma and Beast did not. Seeing her go out begging for mercy, without even slinging a single spell feels like a betrayal of her character, and just needlessly grim-dark.

Comments

[cainofdreaming]

The entire superhero team was supposed to be fearless to start with. Bigby wasn't allowed on the team for the reason that he did have fear that Mr. Dark could play on, but Ozma and Beast did not.

I took that to be hubris on her part, since Beast at least had fear (of losing Beauty through her Lamia side's actions).

[ozaline]

It was the fear of loosing his family that disqualified Bigby from the team, I'll have to re-read it but I thought the fight couldn't elicit a speck of fear from any of them or Mr. Dark would win, and they made sure that everyone would be fearless during the fight with magic 'n stuff.

[beyondthefringe]

It looks as though this series is going to go out as "everyone dies." Or at least a general thinning of the herd. :( I hated how that scene went down.

At least, under the rules of the Fables, characters like Ozma and Beast will undoubtedly come back or at least be reborn because they're so popular with the Mundies. Unless the rules changed.

[ghosty732]

Beast was already "replaced" by his daughter, so the world still has a "Beauty and the Beast" in it (see the back up story in the most recent issue for more").

Oh dear.

[adam_sherman]

You know, seeing as how my only exposure to the Fables-verse has been through The Wolf Among Us, and seeing what has happened to Bigby here (whatever it is that happened), I'm starting to think that if TellTale ever does a Wolf Among Us Season 2, they should go down the alternate continuity route - at the very least, it'd make my more compassionate take on Bigby remain canon.

Re: Oh dear.

[mrstatham]

Except this isn't the standard characterisation for Bigby, and TWAU never really deviates that far from aspects of what was his character prior to his death - they just stretch it enough and use the pre-Fables timeline to justify anything the player might do 'wrong' in say, the eyes of Snow White being sufficiently distant later.

Re: Oh dear.

[adam_sherman]

Good point. However, I was also referring to how Bigby seems like a bit of a sociopath in the comics themselves prior to his marriage to Snow and the birth of his kids.

[ghosty732]

I hated this scene. The deaths in this series were always handled so well, even when they were minor characters/collateral damage (e.g. Mr. Webb way back in Mean Seasons).

Beast deserved more than this: If this had been a whole issue of an all out, too-close-to-call fight to the death with Bigby that ended with Beast dying-fine! But he went in so cocky, in an un-Beast like way, and got taken out like a chump.

Same with Ozma: This is not the scheming and strategic Ozma that we were introduced to at the beginning of Witches. This poor girl never lived up to her potential from that arc... Maybe that was the point, I don't know...

Never thought I'd say that I was glad this series was ending, but something has been off about it for a while now...

[jaybee3]

I don't even think Willingham cares at this point. Maybe this a Morrison-type commentary on the state of comics. I'm almost glad I stopped reading when Dare was killed off. I probably should have stopped during the whole the anti-climactic Mr. Dark arc.

[alicemacher]

I first felt the series was going downhill with the Mr. Dark storyline but it was The Great Fables Crossover that made me stop reading. Looking at this excerpt, I'm glad I did.

Fables should've ended with the defeat of the Adversary in Issue 75. I wonder how much Willingham's continuation of the series was motivated by DC Vertigo begging him not to wrap it up because this was finally their first commercial success since Sandman ended.

[ozaline]

I don't think it should have ended there... There was still a lot of loose threads to tackle, including unfortunately the literals in the Great Fables Crossover, there was a lot of seeds that were sown that still needed to be harvested.

But the GFC was so icky, and it made Mr. Dark stretch on way too long by breaking it up... I feel there were some good stories between here and now, bit it feels like either he's stopped caring as jaybee suggests, or he is suffering under the window of wanting to wrap up on a milestone number with issue 150, and the easiest way to take care of all these dangling plot threads is mass murder.

Either way where it not three issues from the end, I'd stop reading at this point.

[jaybee3]

I can see that. The series has pretty much been aimless since the Adversary was defeated...and then Fabletown was destroyed and that storyline went nowhere (which is basically almost every Fables plotline) and the whole thing with the Prophecy and the Cubs and that really was grimdark (killing off kids!), the Cult of Boy Blue with the Farm Animals which could have been a huge thing - went nowhere - and making Rose Red the series Messiah in a way when she is not an interesting enough (or strong enough IMO) to pull it off convincingly and then THAT went nowhere as well.It's like Willingham had all these ideas but no follow-through.

My guess is if Fables even went to a TV show (and its been tried/shopped several times by DC) much of the latter half of this series would be dropped.

[ninjapeps]

I haven't read Fables since shortly after the end of the war against the Adversary. What exactly is happening here?

[ozaline]

Bigby was killed, and brought back, but Ms. Douglas is holding a part of him that's allowing her to control him she wants to use him has her instrument of revenge... There's a lot more going on but that's why Beast, and Ozma were trying to stop him (not that they know who is pulling the strings).

[rainspirit]

Man, I'm STILL glad I stopped reading at "Wolves." Somehow I knew I would never get a better ending than that.