Fables 18
Cubs in Toyland
by Bill Willingham
art by Mark Buckingham
2013
I used to follow the Fables comic, up through the end of their war with the Adversary who drove everyone out of their original, magical fairy tale lands and into the Mundane World where the series takes place. Volume 18, Cubs in Toyland is pretty much a stand-alone story that takes place shortly after the long-running war storyline has wrapped up.
If you've never read Fables before, it imagines various fairy tale characters as refuges who've built a new home, in secret, among the non-magical population of New York City. Characters from many stories and traditions are all mixed up, and all the old feuds are supposed to be forgiven by amnesty so the new community can have internal peace. Eventually they learn more about the evil empire that forced them to flee their homes, and they try to decapitate the empire by capturing or killing its ruler.
While all that's going on, deputy mayor Snow White and the Big Bad Wolf, who has a human form and acts as the fables' sheriff, fall in love, get married, and have seven cubs together, who also have human forms. After the war, they retire from the government and get a cabin upstate to spend more time parenting their kids, who appear to be somewhere in the 7-9 year old age range when this storyline takes place.
One thing I always liked about Fables is that it doesn't shy away from some of the darkest elements and implications of a lot of those old stories. And in that tradition, Cubs in Toyland is bleak, almost crushingly dark and hopeless until the end, in that particular way that only a story following the merciless logic of a fairy tale can be. (See for example, Richard Coover's "The Goldilocks Variations," which is like, completely bereft of hope.)
Snow White and six of her cubs are at home in their cabin, while Bigby and one daughter are off studying so that she can grow up to be the new North Wind. The cubs are mostly pretty rowdy, rough and tumble kids, except perhaps for Therese, who seems to be the Mary Bennett of her family. (Although that's a little unfair of me. We learn by the end of the volume that her personality was being magically affected the whole time, so you'd have to read an earlier book to see what she was originally like.)
Early on, Therese complains to her mom that she doesn't like the toy boat she got for Christmas, because it won't like her to play with her other toys. This was Snow White's one chance to notice something was wrong and intervene, but she doesn't realize she should worry, and says something about how toys can't talk or get jealous. This is a capital letter Adult Fear scene in light of everything that follows.
The next day, the boat, which can talk and is jealous of Therese's time and attention, bullies her into skipping playing outside with her siblings in favor of finding a creek. When they do, the toy grows to full size, and the little stream becomes an ocean, and Therese gets bossed into climbing onboard and sailing to a distant shore on another world. Eventually, she arrives in Toyland, or at least one island of a larger land, where only lost and broken toys go. It's worse than that actually, although we don't find out right away. This is an island for toys whose child died while playing with them.
The toys, led by giant teddy bear Mr Ives, cajole her into becoming their queen. Therese doesn't really like any of this. She keeps asking to be let go, to see her mom again, to go home, and being told it's impossible. Soon she asks for food, but literally nothing grows on this island, just rocks and sand and mud and all the toys; the only fresh water comes from rain.
Therese is magically hearty, but she will starve to death eventually, and aside from hunger and loneliness, we're told that she's being brought low by the nature of the place and its inhabitants. She's not the first girl the toys have brought here, but the others have all died before fulfilling their purpose. The toys want Therese, as their queen, to magically restore them to pristine condition.
The idea of Toyland is a powerful one, and I like that Willingham focuses in on just part if it, an Island of Misfit Toys if you will, except much worse. You can see how it's a kind of cousin to the older fairy lands. And there's already a kind of heartbreaking component to things like Toy Story or Jim Henson's The Christmas Toy - the idea that our toys are alive and sentient, but also unchanging, so they get lonely when we don't play with them and miss our child selves when we grow up - a kind of cruel nostalgia embedded in the very premise. This just raises the stakes a little higher.
Back on our world, Snow White is distraught over her lost daughter. Bravest son Darien gets an offer to help find his sister from the mechanical tiger who lives in their front yard. He's a toy in the real world and a living tiger in Toyland, and he bring Darien on a rescue mission. They storm the castle but are defeated by an avalanche of broken toys. Darien falls down a mountain back to the shore. As for the tiger, Mr Ives kills him so that Therese can eat, and have a bit more time to perform the queenly magic they're all convinced she's capable of. Therese, visibly wasting away from hunger, eats some meat raw, and orders the burning of wooden toys for fire to cook the rest. She's becoming a killer, too. It would be hard to overstate how wretched she seems by this point.
Bigby returns home to Snow, and he can tell that both his missing children have traveled to another world, but not where they've gone or how to find them. For both parents, this is a time for despair. On the island, Darien's pretty badly injured, and hallucinating from a concussion, but he remembers some Old Magic. He can't rescue his sister, or escape himself. But he can save her, at the cost of his own life. A human sacrifice is the price to power an endless stewpot that will provide Therese meals forever. With no hope for himself, Darien is brave one last time, and casts the spell.
When Therese eats some stew, she realizes what her brother has done, and also, whatever hold the place had on her is broken. She's restored to her own personality, and nearly overwhelmed by guilt and regret. She also knows how the toys can be restored now, and how she can earn forgiveness - by preventing other accidental deaths and saving children's lives. Eventually, as a grown adult, she returns home to the cabin in the Adirondacks, where only a few days have passed, to tell her parents what happened before she leaves again for good. You can tell I'm getting older, because I'm finally really thinking about how the grown ups must be feeling in scenarios like this, and the prospect of losing two children, in this or some ordinary non-magical way, seems utterly devastating.
Alongside all this are some goings on in Fabletown, as the residents adjust to the end of the war. There's also a short story at the end of the collection showing how the Big Bad Wolf got his destiny, illustrated by Gene Ha, instead of Mark Buckingham who drew the main series.
If you've never read Fables before, it imagines various fairy tale characters as refuges who've built a new home, in secret, among the non-magical population of New York City. Characters from many stories and traditions are all mixed up, and all the old feuds are supposed to be forgiven by amnesty so the new community can have internal peace. Eventually they learn more about the evil empire that forced them to flee their homes, and they try to decapitate the empire by capturing or killing its ruler.
While all that's going on, deputy mayor Snow White and the Big Bad Wolf, who has a human form and acts as the fables' sheriff, fall in love, get married, and have seven cubs together, who also have human forms. After the war, they retire from the government and get a cabin upstate to spend more time parenting their kids, who appear to be somewhere in the 7-9 year old age range when this storyline takes place.
One thing I always liked about Fables is that it doesn't shy away from some of the darkest elements and implications of a lot of those old stories. And in that tradition, Cubs in Toyland is bleak, almost crushingly dark and hopeless until the end, in that particular way that only a story following the merciless logic of a fairy tale can be. (See for example, Richard Coover's "The Goldilocks Variations," which is like, completely bereft of hope.)
Snow White and six of her cubs are at home in their cabin, while Bigby and one daughter are off studying so that she can grow up to be the new North Wind. The cubs are mostly pretty rowdy, rough and tumble kids, except perhaps for Therese, who seems to be the Mary Bennett of her family. (Although that's a little unfair of me. We learn by the end of the volume that her personality was being magically affected the whole time, so you'd have to read an earlier book to see what she was originally like.)
Early on, Therese complains to her mom that she doesn't like the toy boat she got for Christmas, because it won't like her to play with her other toys. This was Snow White's one chance to notice something was wrong and intervene, but she doesn't realize she should worry, and says something about how toys can't talk or get jealous. This is a capital letter Adult Fear scene in light of everything that follows.
The next day, the boat, which can talk and is jealous of Therese's time and attention, bullies her into skipping playing outside with her siblings in favor of finding a creek. When they do, the toy grows to full size, and the little stream becomes an ocean, and Therese gets bossed into climbing onboard and sailing to a distant shore on another world. Eventually, she arrives in Toyland, or at least one island of a larger land, where only lost and broken toys go. It's worse than that actually, although we don't find out right away. This is an island for toys whose child died while playing with them.
The toys, led by giant teddy bear Mr Ives, cajole her into becoming their queen. Therese doesn't really like any of this. She keeps asking to be let go, to see her mom again, to go home, and being told it's impossible. Soon she asks for food, but literally nothing grows on this island, just rocks and sand and mud and all the toys; the only fresh water comes from rain.
Therese is magically hearty, but she will starve to death eventually, and aside from hunger and loneliness, we're told that she's being brought low by the nature of the place and its inhabitants. She's not the first girl the toys have brought here, but the others have all died before fulfilling their purpose. The toys want Therese, as their queen, to magically restore them to pristine condition.
The idea of Toyland is a powerful one, and I like that Willingham focuses in on just part if it, an Island of Misfit Toys if you will, except much worse. You can see how it's a kind of cousin to the older fairy lands. And there's already a kind of heartbreaking component to things like Toy Story or Jim Henson's The Christmas Toy - the idea that our toys are alive and sentient, but also unchanging, so they get lonely when we don't play with them and miss our child selves when we grow up - a kind of cruel nostalgia embedded in the very premise. This just raises the stakes a little higher.
Back on our world, Snow White is distraught over her lost daughter. Bravest son Darien gets an offer to help find his sister from the mechanical tiger who lives in their front yard. He's a toy in the real world and a living tiger in Toyland, and he bring Darien on a rescue mission. They storm the castle but are defeated by an avalanche of broken toys. Darien falls down a mountain back to the shore. As for the tiger, Mr Ives kills him so that Therese can eat, and have a bit more time to perform the queenly magic they're all convinced she's capable of. Therese, visibly wasting away from hunger, eats some meat raw, and orders the burning of wooden toys for fire to cook the rest. She's becoming a killer, too. It would be hard to overstate how wretched she seems by this point.
Bigby returns home to Snow, and he can tell that both his missing children have traveled to another world, but not where they've gone or how to find them. For both parents, this is a time for despair. On the island, Darien's pretty badly injured, and hallucinating from a concussion, but he remembers some Old Magic. He can't rescue his sister, or escape himself. But he can save her, at the cost of his own life. A human sacrifice is the price to power an endless stewpot that will provide Therese meals forever. With no hope for himself, Darien is brave one last time, and casts the spell.
When Therese eats some stew, she realizes what her brother has done, and also, whatever hold the place had on her is broken. She's restored to her own personality, and nearly overwhelmed by guilt and regret. She also knows how the toys can be restored now, and how she can earn forgiveness - by preventing other accidental deaths and saving children's lives. Eventually, as a grown adult, she returns home to the cabin in the Adirondacks, where only a few days have passed, to tell her parents what happened before she leaves again for good. You can tell I'm getting older, because I'm finally really thinking about how the grown ups must be feeling in scenarios like this, and the prospect of losing two children, in this or some ordinary non-magical way, seems utterly devastating.
Alongside all this are some goings on in Fabletown, as the residents adjust to the end of the war. There's also a short story at the end of the collection showing how the Big Bad Wolf got his destiny, illustrated by Gene Ha, instead of Mark Buckingham who drew the main series.
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