Fables: Werewolves of the Heartland

Fables creator Bill Willingham continues his impossible run of prolific, high-quality, highly varied stories based on the idea that all the fables, myths and stories of the world are secretly true, and that they all live together, hidden among the real, "mundy" world. The hardcover Werewolves tells the back-story of Bibgy Wolf -- his time as a crack Nazi-hunting guerrilla in the dark forests of Germany. This past comes back to haunt him when he discovers a midwestern town populated entirely by werewolves that have been created by a beautiful, ruthless Nazi scientist who isolated a serum from blood that Bigby left behind when he helped foil a Nazi attempt to revive Frankenstein's monster to fight on their side.

Werewolves draws on the likes of EC Comics' Two-Fisted Tales and other hyper-violent war comics, with plenty of gory decapitations, ruthless executions, suicides, immolations, and tough talk. It's just the right kind of story for Bigby, who's one of the best characters from Fables, which has lots of terrific characters to choose from. The book could conceivably stand alone -- it has its own complete storyline -- but it's much richer in the context of the wider Fables universe.

Fables: Werewolves of the Heartland

• [John Fleming]

  Stories like this are the reason I have a foot and a half of Fables, Jack of Fables, and Cinderella trades on my bookshelf, plus all the individual issues.  Damn you, Willingham!

• [Mel Phistopheles]

  You’d think that five minutes of research could find out what actual wolf teeth look like. “All canines” is a pretty bad design.

  • [John Fleming]

    First, they’re werewolves.  Who’s to say how the anatomy of a mythical creature might differ from the real version?  The storyteller, that’s who.  Second, these are supposed to be creatures from myths and fairy tales instantiated in the real world.  They’re not so much wolves as a personification of traditional fears about wolves and predators.  Third, artistic license.  Fourth, nyaa nyaa nyaa!

• [edison_carter]

  Sounds like Kirsten Bakis’ “Lives of the Monster Dogs”. 

• [Joseph Sawicki]

  I have to say, Fables was temporarily ruined for me when 
  Willingham decided to turn the whole series into a hamfisted metaphor for the israel/palestine fiasco, at one point even going so far as to say outright ‘the fables in exile are ISRAELITES! Get it?’ Wouldn’t have been so bad if the mythological representations of palestineans were portrayed as anything besides ideologic robotic clones and literal troll people.Anyway, it gets much better afterward.

• [Jeff Wilkinson]

  kind of has a “I was Savaged by Weasels!”  vibe to it… very nice.

• [Howard]

   ”Bibgy Wolf”? isn’t it “Bigby Wolf”…. nobody catch that?

• [Duffong]

  “Spoiler Alert” could have been a nice couple of words written into the first bits of the article.