So my favorite Christmas present this year (amongst a number of excellent contenders) is without a doubt the print of a piece by James Jean my mom got for me. James Jean is the artist of the covers of one of my favorite comic series (Fables) and he's a brilliant artist. It's called "Maze", and I absolutely love it. It even has an awesome etched in emblem on it, and has an autograph. I treasure it, and seriously cannot wait for it to be done being framed so I can look at it every day on my wall.
So ABC is turning the brilliant comic series Fables (the best the medium has to offer at this point) into a pilot with hopes (assumably) of getting it on the air in the 2009 fall season. ABC, the channel that just unceremoniously axed fantasy serials such as Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone, and Dirty Sexy Money all on one day.
Granted, from a business standpoint, it made sense. However, from a creative standpoint, it was a bit rough as all three were very well received shows which were harmed greatly by the writers strike last year. With that said, these are going to be easy sells comparatively to Fables, and all three were likely far more inexpensive than what it will cost to produce Fables (even with DSM's amazing cast).
Plus, this is a comic series which features a seductive spy version of Cinderella, an insane, sex obsessed, war mongerer version of Goldilocks, and a character who smokes more than the Marlboro Man (for good, and touching, reasons though). It's not exactly Disney material, who, coincidentally enough, owns ABC.
So my question is this...are they going to turn this into some sort of live action broadcast version of Enchanted? The way I figure it, this show has a stacked deck against it. It's going to be expensive, it's going to be a hard sell, it's built in audience is incredibly passionate and will abandon it if things are going awry. So why is Bill Willingham, god amongst men and crafter of the best comic series on the market, allowing ABC to put out this show instead of an HBO or Showtime (or even FX) who will put in the money to make this a success and will allow for the show to be presented the way it should be.
I do have to say though, I'm excited about the prospect of a Fables show. It's an incredible bit of source material, and if done right, it will be one of the best shows on TV. I'll classify myself as cautiously optimistic - I hope everything goes well. I hope I get to see Bigby and Snow White's love story on TV. I hope Pinocchio is still a foul mouthed perma child.
I hope.
Well, I've reached a milestone. In just one year and three months I've reached my 300th blog post, which is either really freaking sad or pretty cool. It's probably the former, but I'm going to say it's the latter for self confidence sake. Thanks for reading, and hopefully there are even more of you reading this when I reach my next milestone.
The cover for Fables #75 by James Jean
In other news, today was new comic day (strangely when there are national holidays other places in the U.S. receive comics on Thursday but Alaska still receives them on Wednesday - awesome!) and the second biggest release of the year came out. This has been a year of milestones, with Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's run on Y the Last Man ending and Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men run wrapping up as well.
The release that came out today was issue 75 for Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham's epic Fables, an issue that Willingham declared would change the face of the entire series forever and dictate what would happen in the remainder of the series. Well did it fulfill promises laid down by its dynamic creator?
Good god yes.
This issue came in at $4.99, two full dollars more than a standard release, but also came in at 64 pages which is roughly equivalent to two and a half issues worth of material. In its pages were so many major events, so many memorable scenes, so much great dialogue, and so many dynamic visuals that you'd have to read entire arcs of other series to see half of what this issue laid out. The pace was very brisk, but never too quick to ignore the character details that have defined this series entire run. It was so good, I even read it a second time before moving on to other comics (very out of character for me).
I'm not going to reveal any plot details, but I just wanted to say that this truly was a special issue. Hats off to all involved with the run - artist Mark Buckingham provided the widescreen visuals that could be easily described in a word ("epic" would be that word), Steve Leialoha provided his trusty inks, James Jean provided his seventy fifth consecutive brilliant cover, and the maestro of the whole deal, Willingham, provided us with everything we could have asked for and more. Bravo to the team for producing one of the best issues of what is easily one of the best series out right now and one of my favorites of all time.
Also, to note - they are releasing a book of the seventy five covers James Jean has done for the series in one collection. It's pretty incredible work. If you're a fan of stellar art or the series, you'll want to check it out. You can preorder that here.