Comic Book Review: Fables, Arabian Nights (and Days), by Bill Willingham

The Arabian Nights (and Days) arc takes place over issues #42-45 of the comic book series Fables. The story begins to branch out from the comic's usual ethnocentric focus on European Fables, fairy tale and public domain characters. In doing so, however, Willingham relies on problematic racial stereotypes.

The idea behind Arabian Nights (and Days) is that the Adversary has taken centuries to conquer the European Fable lands and has only just begun to invade the Arabian Fable lands. Some of the Arabian Fables, including Sinbad the Sailor, escape from their version of Baghdad and go to Fabletown for help. adparams.getadspec('c_billboard1');

One interesting and unusual plot point is that the language barrier is a real issue; unlike in many fantasy and science fiction stories, there is no quick, handwaving explanation of why everyone mysteriously speaks the same language. Former mayor King Cole, who speaks Arabic for some reason, is enlisted as the Fabletown Ambassador to the East and serves as both translator and English tutor, revealing a well-developed sense of diplomacy.

The language barrier issue, however, is used more for cheap laughs than it is for realism. The Arabian Fables who try to learn English make bizarre and nonsensical mistakes; the author clearly hasn't done research into the types of grammatical and syntactical mistakes that a native Arabic speaker might make in English. In addition, there's an expectation that it's the Arabian Fables' duty to learn English and speak in English for the benefit of the Western Fables, regardless of what language they feel more comfortable speaking, without any major parallel push for the English-speaking Fables to learn Arabic.

The big problem is one present in many stories about other cultures: even if the characters are all from the same culture, the good guys look and act "Western" while the bad guys look and act "ethnic." The Disney version of Aladdin is a good example: Aladdin looks fairly white and speaks with an American accent, while Jafar has darker skin and a more "ethnic" look and a more foreign manner of speech. In Arabian Nights (and Days), Sinbad looks fairly Western and quickly adapts himself to Western culture, while his advisor, Yusuf, looks "ethnic" and is the one who attempts to kill others by setting a genie free.

Although Arabian Nights (and Days) opens up some interesting potential in the Fables universe, it is by far not one of the comic's best arcs.