Fables+1

Being both a woman and a lesbian, I found Alison Bechdel's //"Bechdel test"// and the fact that many contemporary works fail this test, a very interesting subject. Not that I think you need to BE those 2 things in order to agree with her, but I felt it my duty to represent the minority here; so for //Fables// and Bill Willingham, I decided to see how it measured up. My first personal thought about //Fables// was the obvious that the women were gorgeous had perfect bodies and the men were shown to be very rugged and manly. It is obviously very sexist in how it portrays women. Is this how Willingham really things women look or should look? To help with this, let's see who we are talking about:



Now here he is pictured above. To be perfectly fair on if he is being sexist to women or not, you have to look at the portrayal of the men too. Obviously (no offense, Bill) he knows not all men look muscular and rugged so it matches that he doesn't think that (necessarily) about women but is just creative a fabrication of what he wished people looked like. That is only my personal speculation fyi. But that is only the images in his comics so let's continue with the test.

So to pass the Bechdel test, the works need to have 3 things: My first thought when I learned about this was a little horrified and disgusted that this is, in fact, a test that does not pass often! Is this an accurate portrayal of women or just a common image thought up by mail writers? This can get into a long discussion so let's stick to how Bill Willingham does with this aspect. Now this site did not talk specifically about //Fables//, but instead Bill's Spin off from it called //Fairest.// But let's see what it says anyways:
 * 1) At least two women in it
 * 2) Who talk to each other
 * 3) About something besides a man

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So here, Rachel Smith has analyzed //Fairest// and says, "I mistakenly judged this book by it's cover and Willingham's talent for writing engaging stories centering around strong women." Hmmm...not a good start, "There is only one conscious woman in the entire book and she utters a single line at the very end." Rachel's Bechdel test rating? 0/3

Willingham, you disappoint! But Rachel did say that he does have a talent for writing strong women so I won't judge too harshly...yet. So I found another site of a video blog hosted by Cindy Marie Jenkins: []

So here we had 3 women discussing fantasy books and movies in regards to the Bechdel test. Little did I know that this was an hour long discussion and they never even talked about Fables specifically. That could mean that they didn't consider it to pass since they only spoke of ones that did. Cindy did say something worth mentioning, "If they are not drawn that way, will people read them?" Very good question I think! So, moving on, I found another site: []

They gave //Fables// a **Fail** with the Bechdel test as well.

So to conclude; in all my research, I did not see anything that mentioned that Bill Willingham or //Fables// passes the Bechdel test. I now open the floor to thoughts and comments...

Katie

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The producer of the Harry Potter movie series David Heyman and the director Nikolaj Arcel (of 'A Royal Affair' fame) are teaming together to take the Fables comic series to the big screen. Though the series has been very successful in its original format it's still hard to tell whether it will translate well into another medium. So far there have been two attempts to take Fables out of its original format: one to the big screen in 2004, which never got out of the development stage and one to television in 2008, which also proved a fruitless effort. One of the biggest problems of taking books to films are: coming up with a script, make the images on the screen look as faithful as possible to those described in a book (something VERY hard to achieve, by the way), the pacing of a book is generally very different to that of as movie, so that has also to be taken care of; among many others. But having said all that, this is a comics series and in spite of the fact that the pacing of comics and that one of movies are different, there's a lot more elements to work with. The same thing happens with the scrips. Even though the dialogues on comics will be just a small fraction of what a movie script will end up being, they will be a very good starting point. Many other movie franchises did the transition from comics to film swiftly. Namely: the Marvel superheroes franchises and the DC Comics superheroes franchises. I can particularly point out the first installment of "The Hulk", which took a lot of elements of comics itself into the big screen, like the use of many camera angles at once or even the presence of texts alongside the images. Despite not having had the commercial success they expected it to have the transition of comics to film was done flawlessly in this particular case. The fact that comics rely on both words and images to tell a story, makes that transition more dynamic than a transition from just written word to film and the new technologies could help capture those images in a very accurate way in my humble opinion. Only time will tell how well the Fables series adapts to the movie format.



Alejandro R. Marino

As a researcher for the //Fables,// I found the Bill Willingham's comic work pretty interesting. I searched up to see if there are any interview of Bill about his works including Fables which is one of is best works in comics. I came across one of his interviews which I'm going to have the link below. In the interview Bill is asked about his written creations and if he's ever been sure that he's made it and doesn't have to worry about it; his response was that there's no such time that Bill of any other writers have been sure that their work has been completely done. There are always little things in writing that need to be added or revised, he added. This interview of Bill Willingham took time in 2012 which was also the time for ten years with //Fables.// Alice Quinn, the interviewer, asks Bill, "What is second closest to your heart after //Fables?//" Bill thinks for a moments and the responds, "//Fables// is definitely up there; this is a lot like a question of which of your children do you like the least, but a book called the //Elementals// which was my first real foray into comics," he said and continued, "and that made some ways and I tried a few things that were not generally done in comics with it so I thought they were semi-half as successful." From this statement of his we witness that there are other books that he wrote and each one of his written creations has its own place, but he shows a unique fondness for //Fables// which reveals that //Fables// in general are pretty successful.

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Sahar Rahmani

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In this interview with //Fables// creator and chief writer Bill Willingham, the question brought into conversation is who is Bill Willingham's favorite character. Willingham admits how "cliche" his response is going to be. But the interviewer still pushes the question onto him. So Bill admits his favorite character isn't one individual character he's made over the course of the series but in fact is the group or individual he's writing about at that time. As he says, "Whoever's story i'm doing now, I immerse myself into that character. You can't help but love that character you're doing at the time." As he goes on in the interview, he discusses the different areas he'll be getting future fable ideas from to base on new stories. Some include fables from Arabian descent and areas such as Africa, China, Japan, even South America. This is an important detail in my opinion because it shows that Bill Willingham gets inspiration from all over the world. He does not limit his creative ideas to solely North American fables. I hope you all enjoy the interview as much as i did.

Thomas Meyer _

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In the link above, Comic Book Resources sat down with the Creator of //Fables// Bill Willingham. In the interview, they discuss the similarities between //Fables// and the television show //Once.// Willingham states that “My best guess, based upon the same scanty evidence is, yes, it probably is, but perhaps not on more than a "this is the type of thing that's in the air these days" level.” Bill also revealed that ABC, the television company that produce and aired //Once//, had a plan on making //Fables// into a television series but was not made for some reason that the author doesn’t know due to his lack of experience in Hollywood. Willington also shared his influences for the his work //Fables// from the following projects: “//Fractured Fairy Tales”, “The 10th Kingdom”, “ The Charming’s”, “Into The Woods”, “Castle Waitin” and others.// -Tyler Leung

In this interview with Bill Willingham he chats about whats the next step for Fables and teaming up with another author from a comic book called Unwritten. He talks about his artists that he uses for his comic book and how excited he is to work with some artists he's always dreamed of working with. They also speak about if he will ever end the series of fables and he says at the moment he isn't even thinking about stopping the series and he's anxious to get back to writing. Another thing they speak about is how Bill WIllingham makes his female characters into heroines. For example Snow White became a deputy mayor and Cinderella became a spy. They speak about the importance of these female heroes and how this will affect the outcome of the fairy tale. In the interview they also talk about how this fairy tale is more dark and horrific then what people would normally expect in the disney-fied stories. Bill says its good to surprise readers because this keeps them hooked and wanting to read more. Fables is a fairy tale based in New York City that instead of being all about peace and fun is more on the grimy dark side. It has these crazy twists and turns that keeps readers wondering what will happen next. Bill Willingham is on to making more of these dark twisted comics and will keep them coming! __http://www.tfaw.com/blog/2013/04/10/bill-willingham-chats-about-whats-next-for-fables-teaming-up-with-the-unwritten/__ __--Ramiro Perez ENG101.0806__

Fable Fable:"Legend in exile" is a fascinating book by Bill Willingham. In this comic book, the author did a swell job by giving us a lot of extraordinary scenes and details about the characters. I was pretty amazed about how the author definitely change every character that we all know in fairy tales. For an example, the prince charming that was very brave and honest became a very mendacious and repugnant in the Fable novels. All those scenes really surprised me. Since I was a kid, I thought comics book was for everyone. With all those sexual scenes and potty-mouthed characters, we all can say that parent need to forbid certain mature comics books from their children. Because of this novel, all those king of books really inspired me to know more about comics books. According to my research, the Oscar-nominated director Nikolaj Arcel and the screenwriter Jeremy Slater were planning to make a movie about Fable. The only thing I recently visualize, was that how it's going to look on TV. The only thing I know for sure, it's that fan will be very hyperactive when it comes out. Unfortunately there's no announcement about the release date. I'm very curious about what kind of actor will played this brainy and brave detective Mr. Wolf.

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Frantz Metellus