Comics: Fables #2, 100% #1, Murder Mysteries

[avram]

My comics-scanning script (a perl script that looks over the new comics releases list, grepping for the items in my comics list) told me that the only thing coming out that ˆm interested in was the second issue of Fables, Bill Willingham’s fantasy miniseries for Vertigo about fairy-tale characters trying to make it in the real world. I’ve got mixed feelings about this one; I find his setting interesting, but the actual plot bores me.

My script had no reason to tell me about P. Craig Russell’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s radio play Murder Mysteries (which I’d already read as a short story), but I’m glad I noticed it. The story is brilliant, of course, and Russell’s art suits it perfectly, capturing both the unreal splendor of the Silver City and the more mundane glories of our terrestrial City of Angels.

My list also didn’t include Paul Pope’s 100% (but it does now). This five-issue mini has all the things I’ve come to expect from Pope: a grungy SF setting, loose and energetic artwork, and bohemian characters. The actual story doesn’t seem to have really started by the end of the first issue; he’s still getting his pieces onto the board.

Pope’s a libertarian, and I’m tempted to read something into the fact that his two protagonists acquire, in this first issue, a gun and a book respectively. Most libertarians regard freedom of the press and the right to bear arms the two most important tools in liberty’s belt. I don’t think is deliberately adopting this symbolism, but if the second issue involves the quartering of soldiers and search and seizure, I’ll happily take credit for spotting the pattern first.