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.
IGN Comics: Looking back at the series, were there any big surprises with the story or characters that became something that you hadn’t originally intended?
Bill Willingham: 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.
