Over the last several years, we've seen a rash of modern styled updates to the fairy tales. By modern, I don't always mean that the tales are set in the modern world, though especially in the cinema. While the recent version of Beauty and the Beast was set in modern times, the recent versions of Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and Snow White and the Huntsmen were still ostensibly set in medieval times, but with a 21st century action movie aesthetic.
Over the last decade or so, there has been another tendency with retelling fairy stories, one that has taken a very meta course. Rather than a retelling of the story, the stories take on a life of their own. There are plenty of examples of bringing the classic stories into the new cultures and situations, but the meta narrative fairy tales go a step further, bringing the characters out of their worlds and into a modern context, while still maintaining their own sense of where they came from. You can see examples of these meta fairy tales in Bill Willingham's Fables comic series, the TV Show Once Upon a Time and Allan Moore's tawdry Lost Girls just to name a very few. These meta fairy tales bring together characters from many myths and legends in a mash-up story, playing off easily recognizable archetypes to tell new stories.
This story begins innocently enough with a little girl in a red hood and cape, who is accosted by a wolf in the woods on the way to her Grandmother's house to deliver a basket full of treats. The girl is sweet and innocent looking, while the world around her is dark and cruel and full of wolves, or at least one big, rather bad looking wolf. There is a chase, but rather than a tragic ending when the girl is caught, the girl and wolf roll on the forest floor howling with laughter.
That's where the story breaks with the traditional telling, as we are pulled back from the narrative, and into the meta world of Fablewood where the ever watchful Mister Grimm leads an army of Think Police, issuing citations and reprimands when stories deviate from the norm: "We can't just have stories making up their own rules. It would mean anarchy… and anarchy is our enemy… deviancy is the end of civilization." And if the stories deviate too much, they are placed in the Mind Eraser to have their personalities removed.
But the characters are not all in line with Mister Grimm's unwavering devotion to the pure stories. A growing band of disillusioned characters meet to discuss their less-than-fairytale existence. Red Riding Hood and the Wolf are to be punished for their continued deviation from the "official" story, but Red Riding Hood will not forsake her friend for safety, and instead the two escape into the wilds of Fablewood, where they meet a a band of boys who appear to be lost. Close curtain on issue #1.
Fairy Quest started as a Kickstarter project by comic industry vetrans Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos, who have been selling copies of the full 48-page book on their website. However, in order to get the book on shelves in stores, the creators teamed with Boom! to break the story into single issues for printing and digital publication.
The story by Jenkins is entertaining and fun, if not particularly original. He walks on ground laid by Fables, Once Upon a Time and others, but brings some interesting and thoughtful kinks that are likely to appeal to kids and adults. What really makes the comic come alive is the art by Ramos and color and lettering by Leonardo Olea. The artists maintain a cartoonish wide-eyed innocence to their characters in the midst of tragedy, reminding me somewhat of Benjamin Roman's art on I Luv Halloween or Jill Thompson's The Little Endless Storybook.
As the first issue ends on a cliff hanger, I'll be picking up the second issue.
Fair Quest #1, Boom! Studios ($3.99)
