Like the Jack of Fables series, Cinderella is a spin-off of the wildly successful Fables series by Bill Willingham. As established in the main series, Cinderella is much more than simply Cindy, purveyor of fine shoes in Fabletown — she’s an incomparable spy, trained by Bigby Wolf himself. The Fables universe loves to take the familiar and turn it on its head, and Cindy is no exception. She stands in contrast to not only the Disneyfied version of herself and others, but also to Willingham’s own Snow White and Beauty, who have developed well beyond their fabled stories, but in the largely sedentary role of bureaucrats. Not so, Cindy; she makes like an amped up James Bond (who gets a nod and a wink with the title), but with better hair and shoes. And better toys, courtesy of Frau Totenkinder.
In this brief tale (five issues long), Cindy is ordered by Beast to investigate a sudden influx of magical items into the mundy world, orders that send her jetting to the glitter and glamour that is Dubai, where she promptly gets attacked by Al a-din (Aladdin), who thinks she’s the source of the items. Despite Cindy’s annoyance at running into another seemingly spoiled prince (it would seem that she hasn’t yet forgiven Prince Charming), she agrees to a truce so the two may pool their efforts. Their action-packed adventure takes the pair from Dubai to an off-short oil rig to a Fable Homeland so obscure, neither of them has ever heard of it.
Even though it’s the traditional role of the Prince to swoop in and save the day, it’s Cindy who sets things straight. In fact, it’s women who drive this story entirely – the villains are all intelligent, ambitious women, and while Cindy’s the action hero front and center, there just may be another woman behind the scenes pulling her strings.
Running parallel to Cindy’s story is that of her store manager, who despairs of his boss’ frequent absences, and longs to do something more with the shoe store. He takes advantage of this latest absence to shake things up in the inventory. Alas, success – and some sloppy dealing with elves – leaves him in a bind that Cindy has to fix upon her return. As is almost always the case in fairy tales, be careful what you wish for!
Unlike Jack, who tends to wear out his welcome after a few pages, Cinderella’s glamorous, wise-cracking, femme fatale is a lot of fun to read, and hopefully she’ll get further adventures of her own.
(Vertigo, 2010)
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