Peter & Max - upcoming

No spoilers: Fables is a long running Vertigo series written by Bill Willingham, with Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha being the primary artists. For those of you not already lured into the many charms of Fables, here's what it's about: basically all the fairy tale characters (they call themselves Fables) we've all read or heard about such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Pinocchio, and The Big Bad Wolf (Bigby) are actually real and live mostly in a magically screened part of New York City (the talking animals live on a farm in upstate New York).

Fantasy is not my favorite genre, but Bill Willingham, with Fables, has crafted a story that has a cross genre appeal as he turns fantasy / fairy tale conventions inside out, with writing and themes that are adult (and although Fables isn't raunchy as some "mature" books can be, neither is it an all ages book) and progression, rather than stagnation, is the only rule of this series. Presently there are twelve volumes of Fables and five volumes of its companion title, Jack of Fables. Anyone who would like a free copy of the first issue of Fables to see what all the excitement is about needs only to stop by Alternate Reality Comics and I'll be glad to introduce you to this series. Fables is one of those ideas that upon reading it you ask: "Why hasn't this been thought of before?"

So what should Bill Willingham do with Fables in addition to it being a best selling comic? Write a Fables novel! Peter & Max: a Fables novel, will arrive at finer comic book stores October 14th, but since I have such a charmed life, I was fortunate enough to receive an advanced reading copy. I finished reading it this morning (had it not been for my having a booth at AnimeVegas this past weekend I would have finished it earlier) and I have to say that if this comic book writing thing that Bill Willingham has going on doesn't work out, well his prose work will make him a best-selling novelist in short order (actually I already knew this having read his first prose novel, Down The Mysterly River a couple of years ago)!

Peter & Max is about Peter Piper and his brother Max and has equal parts humor, horror, adventure, mystery, and romance which adds up to quite the page-turner of a novel. I don't want to say anything about the story or other fairy tale characters (Fables) that appear in Peter & Max, but I will tease by saying that Bill Willingham, with Max, has created / fleshed out a truly great villain. And because Bill Willingham is a smart writer, he's written Peter & Max in such a way that plays to those unfamiliar with his Fables world, but also having many nudge, nudge, wink, wink scenes for those of us long time readers of Fables without being redundant.

Arriving October 14th, Peter & Max: a Fables novel, is a 400 page hardcover novel with page illustrations by Steve Leialoha and I'm certain that anyone who reads this book will be hooked into the Fablesverse that Bill Willingham has created. Fortunately we have the monthly Fables and Jack of Fables comic (as well as the semi-regular trade collections) to tide us over between what I'm sure will become a great new novel series!