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Fables Vol. 9: Sons of Empire Paperback – June 6, 2007

by Bill Willingham (Author), Mark Buckingham (Illustrator)

4.8 166 ratings

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Collecting FABLES #52-59! Pinocchio suffers seriously divided loyalties between his father, the evil Adversary, and his fellow Fable refugees in New York. Plus, Bigby Wolf reluctantly decides it's finally time to square accounts with his long-estranged father, the North Wind, and makes a journey with Snow White and their kids to find him.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Reeling from Bigby Wolf's destruction of his workshop and magic-tree lot (see Wolves 2006), the Adversary and the imperial forces of the Homelands plan a scorched-earth invasion of not just Fabletown but also the entire planet of the mundies (i.e., us normal humans). But Pinocchio, now back in the Homelands and reensconced with Gepetto (who, as everyone except ordinary Fables knows, is the Adversary), throws a bucket of cold reality on the scheme. This is all more entrancing than it may sound. Short-short stories featuring minor Fables and the still-flowering stylishness of Mark Buckingham's drawing enjoyably relieve the general somberness. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Bill Willingham has been writing, and sometimes drawing, comics for more than 20 years. During that time, he's had work published by nearly every comics publisher in the business, and he's created many critically acclaimed comic book series, including Elementals, Coventry, Proposition Players, and of course the seminal Vertigo series Fables, as well as its spin-off series Fairest, Jack of Fables and The Literals. His work has been nominated for many awards, including the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz comic industry awards and the International Horror Guild award. He lives somewhere near a good poker room.

Born in 1966 in the English seaside town of Clevedon, Mark Buckingham has worked in comics professionally for the past twenty years. In addition to illustrating all of Neil Gaiman's run on the post-Alan Moore Miracleman in the early 1990s, Buckingham contributed inks to The Sandman and its related miniseries Death: The High Cost of Living and Death: The Time of Your Life as well as working on various other titles for Vertigo and Marvel through the end of the decade. In 2002 he took over as the penciller for Bill Willingham's Fables, which has gone on to become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed Vertigo titles of the new millennium. When not in Clevedon, Buckingham can be found with his wife Irma in the Asturias region of northern Spain.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vertigo; First Edition (June 6, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 200 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1401213162
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1401213169
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.69 x 0.47 x 10.16 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #135,211 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #92 in Graphic Novel Adaptations
- #312 in DC Comics & Graphic Novels
- #495 in Fantasy Graphic Novels (Books)

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4.8 166 ratings

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Bill Willingham

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Bill Willingham never fought a desperate and losing battle in a good cause, never contributed to society in a meaningful way, and hasn't lived a life of adventure, but he's had a few moments of near adventure. At some point in his life Bill learned how to get paid for telling scurrilous lies to good people, and he's been doing it ever since. He lives in the wild and frosty woods of Minnesota.

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T. Noever

Doesn't let up!

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2007

Verified Purchase

At the heart of this collection: evil machinations, plans and schemes in the Adversary's Empire; a long-lasting conflict between a father and a son coming to a resolution of sorts. Add to this a very grim twist on the aftermath of the Hansel and Gretel story that makes Frau Totenkinder look almost benign; a hint that the humblest and maybe most tragic of all the residents of Fabletown may turn out to be their savior; little snippets of background material and vignettes on Fables plus one potentially significant non-Fable.

One of the things I like most about the characters is that even the most evil ones do have a story behind the, which reveals the choices and paths that made them become whom we meet here. And the good ones are never quite as clean as we might like to think of them either. Everything has more than one side and Fables makes a point of virtually never letting us forget that.

As always, or maybe even more so, simply brilliant.

5 people found this helpful

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Sir John Jameson

Preparing For War!

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2013

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War is coming to Fabletown, and The empire's got victory all planned out! At first I thought this would all be filler but I was amazed to find a great level of detail in the way this future war was examined. The plan is simple, spread disease and let our allies kill as many as possible. But a victory seems unlikely when Pinocchio explains why wiping out the mundys won't be so easy. Even though these plans were mainly hypothetical, it really was exciting storytelling. A can't miss if you like good war stories.

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Scott William Foley

It Just Keeps Getting Better!

Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2007

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What can I say? Fables continues to be the best comic book series out there--period. Sons of Empire maintains the excellent status quo by setting up a major storyline to come, giving us an interesting Christmas tale, and further exploring the relationship between fathers and sons. Most entertaining, though, is a series of "short stories" throughout the volume that fill in some gaps on lesser characters and events.

Really, if you're not reading Fables, you're missing out on the best series going.

~Scott William Foley, author of Souls Triumphant

4 people found this helpful

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Edwin Benedict

Love this series

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2016

Great read

Fables-Not your childhood's fairy tales

Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2007

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Vol. 9 continues the fables tradition of continued twisted takes on some of childhood's most beloved fairy tales.
War clouds are forming and it appears that cooler heads will prevail, but will they?
Willingham and company knock it out of park again!
If you like any of the previous comics or trades, you will like this one as well.

One person found this helpful

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Chip Hunter

Excellent start, lackluster ending

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2010

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The first half of this collection contains some of the very best FABLES stories of all. As the Adversary and his minions meet to plot the demise of Fabletown (and Earth by association) we start getting clues about the future direction of the story. The art and drama of the Snow Queen's plan for invasion, and especially Pinocchio's predictions of our world's counter-invasion, make these segments some of my favorite of the series. Even Red Riding Hood's make-over and the ensuing trouble for Flycatcher make great reading. And getting to meet some new potentially-important characters like the Gnome King and Rapunzel make the first part of this volume stand out as being even better than usual.

The second half of the story, however, takes a turn towards dullness. The story itself, describing Snow White and Bigby's first Christmas as a family, exploring the relationship between Rose Red and Boy Blue, and then the trip to the Homelands to visit Grandfather North, is satisfactory (but not great). The art however, takes a serious hit as new artists are given whole swaths of story to draw, with less-than-pleasing results. Particularly the Michael Allred (and wife) team's efforts were irritating to me. Sketchy and weirdly-detailed, these portions make the characters look goofy, ugly, or just too different to be comfortable for me. Maybe its just a patter of personal opinion, but I found the artwork to seriously detract from my enjoyment of most of the last half of this volume. On the other hand, the end of this volume contains some gems, with the very short stories answering the questions or readers about miscellaneous happenings in Fabletown.

Definitely a good addition to the story, as the series continues to rock, but I hope the second half doesn't indicate a trend with the art.

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