I’ve been consuming Bill Willingham books with regularity for a few months now. The series I’ve been reading from DC Comics is called Fables, and it takes characters like Snow White and Cinderella and Pinnochio and King Cole and drops them in present-day New York City, where they have their own little subculture among the non-magic “Mundies” like us. (That’s short for “mundane,” of course.) The reason I’ve been able to plow through these 9 books so fast is that they’re graphic novels, and short ones at that.
The Fables series has been so successful that they’ve done one spin-off already: Jack of Fables. Now, apparently, it’s time for a second…and it will be something absolutely crazy: a PROSE NOVEL! From DC Comics! This will be their first foray into the medium, and will be a standalone story centered around Peter Piper, of tongue-twister fame. I’ve been waiting to read this for a long time. Based on the quality of the storytelling in the graphic novels, this one is sure to be a quality book.
And now, the Vertigo blog has put the first chapter up online for free! Check it out if you get a chance. You can find the PDF here.
-David
Wow! Sounds good!