Interview: Bill Willingham talks the End of FAIREST and FABLES
FABLES is approaching it's 150th issue. That issue also marks the end of the series focusing on the Fabletown Fables. While that issue is still a few months away, the final issue of the second series, FAIREST, is out this week. FAIREST #33 features a story on Goldilocks and brings an end to her story. Or is it a beginning?
We last spoke to Bill Willingham about the end of FABLES last year at Emerald City Comicon. We talked to him now about the end of FAIREST and if anything has changed for the end of FABLES.
Before the interview started, we got into a discussion on sixth scale figures since we had a feature on the Star-Lord Hot Toys figure. It turns out Adam Hughes got him hooked on collecting them.
COMIC VINE: Let’s talk about FAIREST.
BILL WILLINGHAM: For whom there are no 1/6 scale collectible figures.
CV: There should be. Okay, first question, if you could have any character from FABLES made into a sixth scale figure Sideshow Collectibles/Hot Toys figure, who would be your number one choice?
BW: Oh, good question. The obvious…you know the greedy part of me that wants to cash in, would be Bigby. Because of the game and everything like that, for strict sales. But I would go off in weird ways like Bufkin or the fat yellow bird on the Farm just because those amuse me. Or the animated cards of the Farm. Anyway, who could say? It’s never going to happen.
CV: Does having the final issue of FAIREST out this week prepare you for the upcoming final issue of FABLES?
BW: I suppose. FAIREST is ending before FABLES is officially ending, which is how we hoped it would be, FABLES should be the last thing. But it doesn’t have that impact because there’s more FABLES related stuff to come up. I think FABLES #150, when it’s absolutely done and out, and we’re all done for a while at least, I think if there’s any emotional impact, that’s when it’s going to happen.
CV: Why did you decided to use Goldilocks for the final story of FAIREST?
BW: Part of it is just that Goldilocks was a favorite character of Shelly Bond. She was constantly constantly nagging me, “Can we have Goldilocks come back,? Can we have Goldilocks come back?” Maybe it’s just that she wore me down. Also, the key moment in the final issue is sort of my message to the readers directly. It’s all about the cyclical nature of the story, they feed back into themselves. Since this last issue, it’s the last one but it’s also a prequel to Fairest in all the Land, the original graphic novel. I just like that it set up the whole nature of these stories. There’s the fact that no stories ever really end because they carry on, if nothing other than speculation in the head of the readers with “Oh I wonder what happens next?” The series may end but the stories don’t.
CV: When you first introduced Goldilocks in FABLES #7 back in 2003, what made you decide to form her character this way and take her down a darker path?
BW: It was my going down a dark path and so many of the decisions of the characters started with asking myself a question. For example, in the case of Bigby, I asked, “In what ways can I make my favorite fairy tale character, the Big Bad Wolf, one of the heroes?” And then I just started asking and answering questions until I got to a legitimate way that could have happened. With Goldilocks, it was almost a throw away character. I wanted her involved with the Three Bears and then that perverse side of me said, “Well what if she’s sleeping with one of the bears? How could that have come about?” The question itself is enough to indite me. That’s when the path got wonky and misguided. But the answer to the question is, well one of the reasons might be, for me, the ability to mock current sentiments about “animals are people too, “you should not distinguish between one critter and another,” and all that, which I believe is nonsense. She sleeps with them for political reasons, to show she is not a speciesist. Once that occurred as an answer, the whole exaggerated socialist hullabullo followed nicely and we were off to the races.
CV: Would you say she was bad or just interested in her own agenda?
BW: I think she’s like any character and any person. It’s a mix of both. I mean no one is just all one thing. The whole Communist movement, as far as no one is greater than another and we’re all equals, sort of fell to the agenda of personal ambition once the greater of equals started building themselves million dollar homes out in the woods and things like that. I don’t believe they were complete hypocrites. I believe there were many true believers but somehow they were able to reconcile unreconcilable situations there. I think she’s the same. I think she really does believe her politics at the same time she can be cynical and say, “I’m in this for my own advancement and such.” I think we are all a mess of contradictions that we have to try and sort out.
CV: We talked almost a year ago about FABLES approaching its end. Has story stayed the same or did you end up changing anything? I know you said you had some parts written out already.
BW: Yeah, for the most part the big sweeping stuff has stayed the same, but I think we were still a year out then. Of course in a year of actually producing the issues, things are going to occur to you and other things are going to be set by the wayside because they just don’t quite work out. Yeah, a lot of that has happened since Emerald City Comicon. I think the main stuff, the “how it’s going to end,” the scene at which it officially comes to an end, that was locked in pretty quickly and pretty adamantly. Some of the side incidents that gets them to that final scene have altered to a certain extent.
CV: Once the final issue is released, will that truly be the end? Would you ever return to the characters?
BW: Let me put it this way, in an ensemble cast that numbers in the hundreds of characters, of course, since I promised they wouldn’t all die horribly at the end, there’s the possibility of coming back to it. That said, the story is written in such a way so that if not a single line or jot is ever added to it, it should come to a satisfying conclusion. After we’ve been away for a little while…we’ll see.
CV: Okay. I guess we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed, and hope, and all that stuff.
BW: Okay. Well, thank you very much Tony.
CV: And we’ll hope for that Bigby Sideshow Collectibles figure.
BW: That would be nice. You know what would happen is if the movie is ever made, knock on wood there, then there will be a figure of whichever actor gets to play the part. Which would be fine with me. But that’s the only way I could see it happening. And hopefully, unlike Star-Lord, they won’t make him too too ruggedly handsome.
FAIREST #33 is now on sale. FABLES: WOLF AMONG US Chapter 5 is also on sale today. FABLES #148 is on sale January 21.
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