Bill Willingham

[pressdarlings]

I just read Robin Unmasked, his War Games work as well as the Robin/Spoiler trade. I found these all quite fun. To people who liked his work on Robin, do you recommend the rest of his run? Considering picking up the other trades. Would like to know what everybody else thinks.

[T Hedge Coke]

I've never been a particular fan, but the whole "art n*****" thing and the sociopolitical ambience of Fables makes him difficult for me to give another shot, even when people rave about his more recent work.

[Beacon]

Fables is one of my favorites. I loved that and the Jack spin-off so much that I gave most of his other work a try. Proposition Player and the Thessaly minis are really underrated comics.

That made his non-Vertigo work all the more disappointing. I always thought his DCU stuff was terrible. War Games is what actually drove me away from Robin. I didn’t come back until Dixon fixed his mess.

[Captain Jim]

I think he may have been the second best person who had an extended run writing Robin (Dixon being first).

[ScottyQuick]

I really, really disliked his work on Robin. I think it was the second worst run the book had, "losing" the first place because he never ruined Cass and he introduced Bernard :D.

[pressdarlings]

I've never been a particular fan, but the whole "art n*****" thing and the sociopolitical ambience of Fables makes him difficult for me to give another shot, even when people rave about his more recent work.

What do you mean?


I think he may have been the second best person who had an extended run writing Robin (Dixon being first).

Does his run improve or does it stay moderately the same? I enjoy Dixon but he's really hit or miss for me. When he hits, it's some of my favorite Batman-related work. When he misses, it's okay. Not good, not bad. Just okay.


I really, really disliked his work on Robin. I think it was the second worst run the book had, "losing" the first place because he never ruined Cass and he introduced Bernard :D.

Yeah, I think Bernard is annoying but that's somewhat the point. Johnny Warlock I find...interesting. I just really dug the way Jack finding out Tim is Robin was handled.

[T Hedge Coke]

What do you mean?

He used the phrase, in print, "art n*****" (use your imagination to figure out what non-noogie word that should be) in response to a fan telling/asking him what he should draw. That's not a word that was begging to be reclaimed by old White guys.

And Fables, well, I don't mind that it wears its brand of conservatism on its sleeve as a moral order to its universe, but I don't have to read it, either. There's some iffy gender politics going on, too, that sour the book for me.

But, that's me. There are a lot of people who love his work, and I'm not going to pretend that just because I can't jive on it, those people are somehow wrong.

[dancj]

For me anything that Willingham's done for Vertigo is excellent. His work for DC has been mostly mediocre, but Robin's about the best of that bunch.

[Karl O'Neill]

I have only read unmasked which I have enjoyed.

His fables work is excellent.

[pressdarlings]

He used the phrase, in print, "art n*****" (use your imagination to figure out what non-noogie word that should be) in response to a fan telling/asking him what he should draw. That's not a word that was begging to be reclaimed by old White guys.

And Fables, well, I don't mind that it wears its brand of conservatism on its sleeve as a moral order to its universe, but I don't have to read it, either. There's some iffy gender politics going on, too, that sour the book for me.

But, that's me. There are a lot of people who love his work, and I'm not going to pretend that just because I can't jive on it, those people are somehow wrong.

Whaaat? That's crazy. Fables has been on my pick-up list for a while, just haven't gotten around to it.

[Captain Jim]

I really, really disliked his work on Robin. I think it was the second worst run the book had, "losing" the first place because he never ruined Cass and he introduced Bernard :D.

There haven't been that many writers with extended runs on Robin. (I don't consider Fabian's issues to be an extended run; morre of a fill-in at the end of the title.) That leaves only Jon Lewis. You liked Lewis better than Willingham? I didn't.

[ScottyQuick]

There haven't been that many writers with extended runs on Robin. (I don't consider Fabian's issues to be an extended run; morre of a fill-in at the end of the title.) That leaves only Jon Lewis. You liked Lewis better than Willingham? I didn't.

Why not? Lewis showed Tim for who he was, a neurotic worrywart who loves life and is incredibly brilliant. Willingham showed a chatty, carefree, jealous kid.

And you're forgetting Chuck Dixon.

[Captain Jim]

Why not? Lewis showed Tim for who he was, a neurotic worrywart who loves life and is incredibly brilliant. Willingham showed a chatty, carefree, jealous kid.

And you're forgetting Chuck Dixon.

Not at all. In my original post, I said,


I think he [Willingham] may have been the second best person who had an extended run writing Robin (Dixon being first).

[nepenthes]

What do you mean?

Fables is apparently a pro Israeli allegory concerning the Jewish diaspora and return to holy lands .

[snarkbunny]

Fables is apparently a pro Israeli allegory concerning the Jewish diaspora and return to holy lands .

No, it's not. Clearly, you have neither read Fables nor any of Willingham's comments on that topic.

[nepenthes]

No, it's not. Clearly, you have neither read Fables nor any of Willingham's comments on that topic.

oh excuse me I must have been reading something else then......another book about ghettoized characters trying to return to fabled lands or something.....:rolleyes:






DEPPEY: In an interview that you did for a website called Pop Culture Shock, you equated the basic concept behind Fables to the Jewish Diaspora; you've got characters who originally lived in the Land of Fable and then a great adversary rose up and drove them out, and now they kind of live in little ghettos in pockets around our world. I'm wondering if that was an intentional building block from the beginning, or did the metaphor rise up over time as you developed the concept?

WILLINGHAM: No, that was there from the beginning. As I said, I was raised in a pretty conservative family. My parents were both Scoop Jackson Democrats, which by today's standard would make them, you know, horrid old conservative Republicans. The other aspect of that was that my mother, for reasons that still I do not understand, was rabidly pro-Israel. The only big trip she even wanted to take in her life but she never got to was to go to Israel, and I didn't understand it as a kid, but growing up, the whole story of how the modern nation came about with the partition and the wars and all that -- and just this whole story of the tiny little country with being surrounded on all sides by these vast, vast nations dedicated to its extinction -- I guess it appealed to my mother's sense of "root for the underdog" and if there's any underdog in this world, Israel's it. So I think I just absorbed my mother's love of Israel. Politically, I'm just rabidly pro-Israel and so that, as a metaphor, was intended from the beginning. As a matter of fact, since this interview will be coming out after issue #50, there's a scene in which it's actually stated as fact that Fabletown's battle against the vast Empire, the Adversary, is very much like Israel against the Arab nations. A scrappy little country full of stiff-necked bastards who, the only way we're gonna protect our existence is to make sure that anytime you do anything bad to us, we're going to make you pay horribly. I use that as a formal analogy for the existence of Fabletown and their relationships to the Empire. So that's a roundabout way of saying that yes, that was in there purposely.
http://www.tcj.com/index.php?Itemid=48&id=410&option=com_content&task=view

[snarkbunny]

I use that as a formal analogy for the existence of Fabletown and their relationships to the Empire.

An analogy is not the same as an allegory, by the way, which is how you referred to it.


Fables is apparently a pro Israeli allegory concerning the Jewish diaspora and return to holy lands .

If you had said Willingham has used pro-Israeli analogies in Fables, I would not have spoken up, because that is accurate.

Check out from another interview (http://www.avclub.com/articles/bill-willingham,14134/)


AVC: You've said in the past interviews that you're unequivocally pro-Israel. Do you think of Fables as communicating a political message, or as being persuasive in any way?

BW: No, I actually thought that that would be the best example in politics today to use as an example. Maybe my fondness for Israel helped in deciding that that was a good example to use, but no, Fables is not didactic in any way. At least, not intentionally. I don't expect people to read that issue, bop themselves in the head, and say, "Oh my God, I've been so stupid about my politics in Middle Eastern affairs. I'm going to change my tune right now, because, Bigby would want me to." I don't expect anything like that, and I wouldn't put that line in almost any other character's mouth, just because I couldn't imagine other characters thinking along those lines. Whereas Bigby was a guy who we've already established that historically, he went to war several times, and was involved in World War I and II. He would be the type of character who would think along those lines.

This is really not relevant to this thread, though.

[nepenthes]

ok. then you should have just corrected the analogy/allegory thing in the first place instead of seemingly contesting the overall point. it would have avoided this puerile exchange.

to me, in this context, they're pretty much interchangeable anyway. and anything about Bill Willigham is relevent to this thread especially when its a response to somebodies direct question.

[nepenthes]

double post