Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Vertigo (2013), Paperback, 128 pages
Description
New York Times bestselling, award-winning creator Bill Willingham presents a new series starring the female FABLES. Balancing horror, humor and adventure in the FABLES tradition, FAIREST explores the secret histories of Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel ,Cinderella, The Snow Queen, Thumbelina, Snow White, Rose Red and others. In a stand-alone tale, Beast must hunt a beauty, but what is her relation to his past? And then, in a 6-part epic, Rapunzel lives one of the most regimented lives in Fabletown, forced to maintain her rapidly growing hair lest her storybook origins be revealed. But when word of her long-lost children surface, she races across the sea to find them-and a former lover.
User reviews
LibraryThing member psutto
Good
OK I ditched Fables a while ago as the world went in a direction I wasn’t very interested in. I have been tempted back to that world by the excellent Lauren Beukes and she does an admirable job with the source material. Rapunzel’s back story is explored by Beukes and it has a surprising
Overall – Fans of Fables will probably love this, for me it was good but had a few issues
OK I ditched Fables a while ago as the world went in a direction I wasn’t very interested in. I have been tempted back to that world by the excellent Lauren Beukes and she does an admirable job with the source material. Rapunzel’s back story is explored by Beukes and it has a surprising
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Asian twist, well Asian horror does seem to be obsessed with hair doesn’t it? The art, by Inaki Miranda is lush and there are some stunning panels. But I was a little underwhelmed, the ending of the story arc seemed a bit rushed, a few things didn’t make sense (to me) at the end and there was a horrid HPD (Huge Plot Device) deployed to reset things in the end. Perhaps it will be explored again at some point in the future but since I expected, and wanted, a standalone it felt like a bit of a cheat. There is an additional Willingham story at the end with Reynard the fox but the less said about that the better. I doubt I’ll be revisiting the world again, there is something I just don’t like about it despite having a lot of promise in the beginning. Overall – Fans of Fables will probably love this, for me it was good but had a few issues
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LibraryThing member clfisha
Rapunzel’s past catches up with her and draws her to Japan in search of her children. A hidden Kingdom where myths ?, split into two, hide from the world and are ready for war. All they need is a catalyst. This is Rapunzel as Japanese horror, of course it’s the hair.
It’s the visual ideas and
The story is ok but gets lost and mired in being a fables story as the 1st story must explain the world and last story must smooth it all away (oh look a potion to remove memory!). Characters are seemingly crowbarred in, Bigby makes an appearance & Jack too, author choice or not its skews the story into near bland hodge-podge. This comic needed more time and space to explore.
Ok I am not a fan of fables, but I like what Beukes was try to do. It's refreshing, violence is treated with more of an edge (the graphic layout underlining it is quite stunning), the balance of female characters and a nod to the original slut shaming story of Rapunzel. It's all good but not captivating and does nothing to change my mind about Fables.
There is also a story tacked onto the end, that quite frankly is so bad I am astounded. I guess because it has a fox in it and a romance story with some women someone thought it would fit the Japan/fairest slot. I gave up when someone told a dryad to put on some clothes for a date as to retain some "mystery". Yes a dryad. I presume it was meant to be funny, alongside the toilet humour and chirpy monologue. Still it had a piece of plot dropped into it, so that's nice.
It’s the visual ideas and
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the art that make this worth seeking out. There are some amazing spreads and arresting individual panels littered amongst sometimes over cluttered neon delights. The nest created of tangled chaotic hair, the J-Horror images bleeding strikingly on the page, the nods to Miyazaki.The story is ok but gets lost and mired in being a fables story as the 1st story must explain the world and last story must smooth it all away (oh look a potion to remove memory!). Characters are seemingly crowbarred in, Bigby makes an appearance & Jack too, author choice or not its skews the story into near bland hodge-podge. This comic needed more time and space to explore.
Ok I am not a fan of fables, but I like what Beukes was try to do. It's refreshing, violence is treated with more of an edge (the graphic layout underlining it is quite stunning), the balance of female characters and a nod to the original slut shaming story of Rapunzel. It's all good but not captivating and does nothing to change my mind about Fables.
There is also a story tacked onto the end, that quite frankly is so bad I am astounded. I guess because it has a fox in it and a romance story with some women someone thought it would fit the Japan/fairest slot. I gave up when someone told a dryad to put on some clothes for a date as to retain some "mystery". Yes a dryad. I presume it was meant to be funny, alongside the toilet humour and chirpy monologue. Still it had a piece of plot dropped into it, so that's nice.
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LibraryThing member fyrefly98
Summary: The Hidden Kingdom is Rapunzel's tale, set at some point before the first volume of Fables. Rapunzel's hair grows four inches an hour, faster if she's upset, which she certainly is when she's attacked by a flock of origami cranes bearing the message "Your children." She's spent ages
Review: I can't tell if this volume was too busy and too all over the place, or just too busy and too all over the place to suit me. To explain: I am not a Japanophile. I don't actively avoid things related to Japanese culture, but I don't seek them out, either. So I tend to find a lot of it confusing, often overwhelmingly so. And this comic was kind of overwhelming, both visually (take the stereotypical crowded modern Tokyo street scene and apply that same sensibility to almost every panel), and in terms of the storylines. There were stories from at least three separate timelines being told all at once, and somehow they weren't delineated in such a way that I could follow the shifts easily. I also found that the structure made it difficult to connect emotionally with any of the characters, or their relationships to each other. Overall, while it was nice to step back in time to the early days of Fables, this particular installment didn't do much for me. 3 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: I didn't love it, but again, this may be entirely me; people more familiar with Japanese mythology will likely have a much better time of it than I did.
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hunting her babies, stolen at birth by the midwife (which she believes was Frau Totenkinder in disguise). Now someone in the Hidden Kingdom - Japan's version of Fabletown - knows where they are, but in order to go there, Rapunzel's going to have to confront another part of her past from before the Adversary drove the Fables out of the Homelands - one that ended badly for everyone involved, and Fables tend to have long memories about these sorts of things.Review: I can't tell if this volume was too busy and too all over the place, or just too busy and too all over the place to suit me. To explain: I am not a Japanophile. I don't actively avoid things related to Japanese culture, but I don't seek them out, either. So I tend to find a lot of it confusing, often overwhelmingly so. And this comic was kind of overwhelming, both visually (take the stereotypical crowded modern Tokyo street scene and apply that same sensibility to almost every panel), and in terms of the storylines. There were stories from at least three separate timelines being told all at once, and somehow they weren't delineated in such a way that I could follow the shifts easily. I also found that the structure made it difficult to connect emotionally with any of the characters, or their relationships to each other. Overall, while it was nice to step back in time to the early days of Fables, this particular installment didn't do much for me. 3 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: I didn't love it, but again, this may be entirely me; people more familiar with Japanese mythology will likely have a much better time of it than I did.
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LibraryThing member -Eva-
Rapunzel and some companions travel to Japan to find her long-lost children, but end up in a war between different factions in Japanese Fabletown. This volume also includes an amusing short, involving Reynard the fox on a date with dryad Princess Alder. I like that Rapunzel is given quite an
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unexpected and interesting backstory and the Japanese Fables are really fantastical and fantastic. The storyline feels slightly forced, but that may be because I'm used to Willingham's voice and Beukes has a very different style. And, I need to give a shout-out to Inaki Miranda, who makes just beautiful art. Show Less
LibraryThing member Rosa.Mill
Tells the story of what happened to Rapunzel after her story ends and before she got to Fabletown in addition to her continued search for her daughters. There's also a short Reynaud story at the end. Can't believe I waited so long to read this.
LibraryThing member Rosa.Mill
Tells the story of what happened to Rapunzel after her story ends and before she got to Fabletown in addition to her continued search for her daughters. There's also a short Reynaud story at the end. Can't believe I waited so long to read this.
LibraryThing member Rosa.Mill
Tells the story of what happened to Rapunzel after her story ends and before she got to Fabletown in addition to her continued search for her daughters. There's also a short Reynaud story at the end. Can't believe I waited so long to read this.
LibraryThing member Rosa.Mill
Tells the story of what happened to Rapunzel after her story ends and before she got to Fabletown in addition to her continued search for her daughters. There's also a short Reynaud story at the end. Can't believe I waited so long to read this.
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
With the addition of Lauren Beukes on the writing team, volume 2 of the Fairest series, The Hidden Kingdom was interesting. This volume has Rapunzel as the main character and we follow her in her travels to Toyko in order to investigate a mystery that has evolved from her past. Favorite Fable
The artwork in this issue stood out for me, and the Toyko scenes were very colorful. The artists used both Japanese mythology and pop culture to create and edgy backdrop to the characters and their story.
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characters that appear in this issue are Bigby Wolf, Frau Totenkinder and Jack of Fables. A secondary story features Reynard the Fox as he tells the story of trying to date the forest dryad, Princess Alder.The artwork in this issue stood out for me, and the Toyko scenes were very colorful. The artists used both Japanese mythology and pop culture to create and edgy backdrop to the characters and their story.
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Language
Original publication date
2013-07-30
ISBN
1401240216 / 9781401240219
Local notes
Explores the secret histories of Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella, The Snow Queen, Thumbelina, Snow White, Rose Red and others. In a stand-alone tale, Beast must hunt a beauty, but what is her relation to his past? And then, in a 6-part epic, Rapunzel lives one of the most regimented lives in Fabletown, forced to maintain her rapidly growing hair lest her storybook origins be revealed. But when word of her long-lost children surface, she races across the sea to find them--and a former lover.