Bookish Thoughts

Animal Farm is the second installment in Bill Willingham's Fables series. Although I didn't like it quite as much as the first story, it was still pretty enjoyable. I think a lot of the references simply went over my head, since I never read George Orwell's Animal Farm . It becomes obvious pretty quickly that this tale of politics is referencing its namesake quite a bit. But the parts I did understand were cool. The fables, as the refer to themselves are mostly confined to two separate communities. The ones that either are or can pass as human mostly live in NYC in a kind of underground society. The non-human creatures live on a massive farm in upstate New York. Although they have plenty of room, the farm is something of a prison. After all, if a "mundy" were to stumble across a talking pig or s giant, the cover of the fables would be blown. During a routine check on conditions at the farm, Snow White and her sister, Rose Red, discover a conspir...

Back in the fall two new TV series debuted that I was really excited for. Once Upon a Time premiered on ABC and Grimm started up later that week on NBC. Both of these series were focused on fairy tale characters, albeit with different premises. And each of them featured one of my favorite writers (Jane Espenson and David Greenwalt, respectively). Sadly, neither show managed to hold my attention for more than a handful of episodes. One week I forgot to set my DVR to record them, and then I just never bothered to catch up on Hulu. Despite focusing on fairy tales, both fell short of what I wanted. Then I discovered that both shows were both inspired by the same source material: a series of comic books by Bill Willingham called Fables . Twice the series had been pitched as a TV show. And twice the show ended up going in a completely different direction than the comics had. Strangely, the two shows were pitched three years apart, but ended up premiering in the same week b...