Fables #141 marks the start of the final arc of the series, aptly titled Happily Ever After. We spoke with Fables creator Bill Willingham about the beginning of the end.

Fables #141 cover.

Oh, absolutely. There were several surprises in that Fables was designed to be one of those kinds of series where one artist would draw one five or six-issue story arc, and then there'd be another one and another one and another one, sort of following the same template.What came as a surprise in that regard is that when Mark Buckingham was offered his choice of the first or second arc, he took the second one because it takes place on a farm with a bunch of animals, and he was tired of drawing cities. He just killed it on the second arc, and then he sort of decided that we weren't going to do this thing where artists switch over after every arc. He almost told Shelly and I that he was staying on as a regular artist, which thank goodness he did, because I think the series really, really came into its own when he came onto it. So that was just a surprise in the way we planned on doing it.As far as the story, every issue we did suggests more story to build on it, because we have this sprawling cast. It just got larger and larger. Some of the characters that were just brought on for one purpose sort of insisted on being a bigger, more involved, more important character. A couple of examples are -- Boy Blue was only brought in just because Snow White was going to be running things from the business office. I hate when you have characters talking and explaining their motivations to no one, to the air. So we thought, "Why not just put someone in the office with her, to give her someone to explain things to?" Someone kind of naive and innocent to the extent of, "Well, gee, Miss Snow! Why didn't you do this?" so she could explain her motivations in a less awkward way.The trouble is, one, we never had that scene. I don't think there was ever a scene where Boy Blue and Snow White have any kind of conversation that's just an excuse for Snow White to drop exposition. The other thing is, he became an interesting character to me. I thought he was just going to be a cypher, which is why I decided to use Boy Blue, because, well, it's kind of a throwaway character from a throwaway little nursery rhyme. You know, "Let's not use anyone important in this role." Well, he sort of made himself important.Basically when, okay, he plays the horn because in the nursery rhyme it says, "Come blow your horn." His name is Blue, so of course he plays the blues. I had to ask that next question, that next obvious question, which is, "Well, why does he play the blues?" The good answer to a question like that is there's some tragedy in his life that makes him a blues player. Once we started to build that around the character, he was off to the races. He just became a big, important, larger-than-we-ever-anticipated character and a surprise because of it.Flycatcher was the same way. Flycatcher was done as a one-time visual joke, a kind of fuddy-duddy, innocent janitor -- just a background character who was an ongoing little joke in that he eats flies sometimes, because he was the Frog Prince and sometimes he forgets he's no longer a frog. And that was it. That was originally the only planning that went into the character. Boy, did he explode. We just started adding things to him, things that just sort of got layered on him until there was a critical mass where we just had to do something big and important with the character.So those are the two examples that come most immediately to mind. The phenomenon where writers will say that these characters wrote themselves, this is the kind of thing that happened with them.The Boys and the Band is one of the stories that sets up the final story arc in the sense that Boy Blue's band -- bringing up Boy Blue again -- who continued to play up at the farm without him, goes off on an adventure.During the adventure, the idea takes hold that it really is time to go home. Fabletown was formed as a refugee community, and it was always intended to be temporary. We are staying together here -- in hiding, in secret -- in this out-of-the-way little world specifically just to lay low until we can go home again to our ancient lands and kingdoms.In Boys and the Band, it's pretty much shown, "Okay, the empire's over. It's time to go home and start cleaning up all these freed kingdoms that you created just by virtue of chopping the head off vampires. It's time to pack up and go home." That sets that idea, and that's one of the ideas going into the final arc, which is, Fabeltown is coming to an end because people are realizing that there's nothing keeping them from going home anymore.The other thing that informs the final arc, the main driving force of it, is we started the series off with this sibling rivalry between Snow White and Rose Red. It was exacerbated and then off again from time to time throughout the series. Lately they've been getting along pretty well together, but without any real resolution. They're still striking at each other from time to time. The final story in addition to the closing up and going home is, the Snow White/Rose Red rivalry gets resolved once and for all in a way that there's no question at the end of it, as to what happens between the two sisters.Oh, good question! Anything I've left unresolved... Well, I don't know if there's a big one. I mean, without giving too much away, when Matt Sturges and I were writing the Jack series, we decided to go for the whole Shakespearean ending and just have everyone die, just because Jack was always known as a series of "Dare we do this?" and kind of challenging ourselves to go beyond the point of good taste and vulgarity. Having the entire cast die at the end just seemed too wicked a thing not to do.So the one promise I made publicly about ending Fables is that not everyone will die, without giving any kind of specific ratio of, like, 40 percent, maybe a majority, I don't know. The ones who do not die we're going to try and include -- starting with issue #141, which comes out in a few days -- the last story of short stories with each one of the main stories.For example, #141 has the last story of Flycatcher. The last story of Flycatcher takes place sometime in the undisclosed future. Some of these characters, their last stories, their resolutions, will be no more than to say, "And then they went on to live their life and have many adventures." So to that extent, since we do not bring every single character to the end of its life, there's going to be some unresolved things. We'll hint at what the rest of their lives might be like, but no hard and fast answers straight down the line.With others that are not fortunate enough to survive the last story, there are going to be very detailed, specific answers.Well, that doesn't necessarily mean they'd make it, because some of the last stories are going to show that character's encounter with the Grim Reaper.So yeah, some will make it, and some won't. Hopefully the readers will be satisfied with the conclusions of any of their favorite characters.I have no idea. The final story is being structured in a way to where, by the very last page -- and we're being very careful to have the last ultimate thing happen on the last page and there be nothing else after it -- by that moment, if we never come back to Fables again, I think the story's resolved.Whether you enjoyed what happened or you wished other things would have happened, the one thing the reader won't be able to complain about is that it didn't come to any real conclusion. It absolutely comes to a real conclusion.That said, any situation in which you have characters surviving -- and there's always a possibility of coming back -- as I've said often in public when people would ask us, "Is Fables ever coming to an end?" and my answer is, "Fables comes to an end all the time." We do story arcs, and many of the stories come to very specific conclusions.Fables is more of a setting than it is a specific story. It's a setting in which all kinds of specific stories take place. That said, at the end of it, the setting will probably remain. So the possibility of coming back someday? I guess it's possible. It depends on, I think, the finality of the final issue, how it affects me. Like, does it affect me over a period of years, as saying, "Nope, that's done" -- or, as is often the case with every kind of series over a period of years, other ideas come in saying, "You know, we could still go do this." I could not begin to say at this point which of those will occur.Well, I think they will see that this final arc involves so many things that were built up throughout the run of Fables. For those readers that have been here all along, I hope that this comes to a satisfying conclusion and you can see so many things resolved, many of which you've been wondering about all along.For any potential new readers -- especially those that have put off reading Fables because they want a series they know comes to a specific end -- well, now we know it's coming to a specific end. So at least those qualms about reading the series aren't there anymore. So I invite you to pick it up -- hopefully the first one -- and see if it's something you might like.Regardless, my gratitude and the gratitude of those of us who've worked on Fables is pretty vast. We're quite happy with the way this has worked out and created such a loyal readership.That's my understanding. You have to understand that the way Hollywood works is a mystery inside a puzzle box, at least as far as I'm concerned. So my belief is, the first run at the movie script is being done right now. Don't hold me to that because quite often I'm the last to know.

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