Bill Willingham

Bill Willingham’s Batman vs. Bigby!: A Wolf in Gotham collects issues #1-6 of the limited series with pencils by Brian Levell, inks by Jay Leisten and Anthony Fowler Jr., colors by Lee Loughridge, letters by Steve Wands, and cover art by Yanick Paquette and Nathan Fairbairn. Bigby and the world of Fables appeared in comics published by Vertigo, a DC imprint, but traditionally existed apart from the larger DC Universe – unlike other Vertigo titles such as The Sandman and Hellblazer. Following the end of Vertigo and the creation of DC’s Black Label, this story affords the opportunity for a limited crossover. This is also Willingham’s return to the franchise since Fables concluded with issue #150 in 2015 and the first Fables series since the short-lived spin-off, Everafter.

The story begins with Batman and the Robins tracking a series of killings suggestive of a giant wolf. Meanwhile, Bigby traverses Gotham looking for information and the Bookworm leads his band of literature-themed criminals in a plot targeting the sources of rare and valuable books. Though events initially set Batman and Bigby at odds, they form an unlikely partnership to track Bookworm and his gang in order to retrieve a magical book that ended up in Gotham after an explosion in the Fables’ realm. Willingham has fun playing with the Batman mythos, especially as Batman’s contingency plans and collection of Robins resemble a fable in their own right. He has the freedom to play with Batman in a way that both honors the essential truth of the character while making him and his world work for this crossover. It is particularly nice to see Bigby, Cinderella, and other Fables characters come to life in Willingham’s prose. The success of this series lead to a new Fables storyline titled “The Black Forest” with the series’ relaunch in issues #151-162.… (more)

First a warning - this is a violent, gore fest more often then not. Bigby isn't a subtle man to begin with and these folks pissed him off something bad and he let's loose on them. Also there is a lot of nudity running around these pages. Male and female. I wouldn't call it explicit persay--girls are obviously girls, guys are obviously guys, but its pretty clinical overall.

FABLES remains one of my favorite comics and barring something slipshod editor deciding to butcher it, that's not likely to change. I've looked forward to this book for a long time mainly because Bigby is my favorite character, bar none (save Snow White and Cinderella), and it promised to give us a bit of back story on the man behind the wolf. In that it didn't disappoint. Bigby has spoken of his time in WWII, when he helped out the Allies (unofficially) to stop the encroachment of the Nazis, but in this he reveals just what he did exactly.

The art isn't anything to write home about, its not up to the usual standards of the comic and part of that may be because most of the story arcs had one artistic team (inkers, layout, pencils) throughout. WEREWOLVES has numerous inkers and in a comic book that can really fudge up the artwork. From a reader's perspective, it made folk hard to tell apart (I kept mixing up Diana and Oda, or Alwin and Carl for instance, which in turn confused me as all four had separate agendas more or less). The werewolves, whether intentionally or not, were all colored basically the same so even though Bigby was going through them wholesale at one point, I had no idea who was dead and who was not.

Story wise this was an interesting conundrum for Bigby. He kind of helped create the mess and was at a loss as to how to finish it. Technically no one in that town is a true Fabletown resident. None of them came from the Homelands, or were born from parents who fled the Homelands (such as Snow and Bigby's children), and thus the charter didn't cover them. On the other hand they weren't exactly Mundys (humans). He basically let it play out, hoping for a graceful outcome, but knowing the outcome would be far worse then anything he wanted to find.

A word to Oda, she tried to seduce Bigby (for what reason is never quite explained, we really only have Bigby's own guess) and he turned her down flat. If she goes prancing off to Fabletown and mentions such a thing to anyone (even in jest), Snow will find out and Snow will put a silver bullet in her chest before Bigby can so much as blink. And I will pay good money to see that.… (more)