Vik's Christmas Grotto

Vik sez:

“Well, I like DVDs, obviously! Also, books and comics and random toys. These are not all from this year, and they’re not all presents. I tend to get clothes for Christmas! But anyway, in no particular order:

• Agora: Hypatia writes new mathematical theorems while Alexandria burns. I love Rachel Weisz, and although this film makes me cry a lot, I think it’s ace.
• Pride and Prejudice: one of my all time favorite books, and this BBC adaptation is the best by far. The new version has all the original colours put back in, which destroyed my impression of Regency England as cloaked in pastels.
• Senna: even if you’re not a fan of F1, I defy anyone to watch this film and not be massively affected by it.
• The 49ers (Alan Moore): this is my favourite Alan Moore graphic novel. It’s sort of steampunky, I guess, with cute boy!kissing and prejudice and war and awesome female characters.
• Air(G Willow Wilson): why is this not more well known? Flight attendant Blythe is afraid of flying, but this doesn’t stop her from a magic realism tour of lands that don’t exist. Bonus: positive depictions of Islam, Amelia Earhart being awesome beyond words, and things not being quite they seem. A bit like a cross between Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie in graphic novel format.
• Fables (Bill Willingham): If you’re not reading Fables, you need to start. All fairy tales are real, and they’re living in modern-day New York, waging a war against an enemy known only as the Adversary in their homelands. Snow White is far and away my favourite character, and her relationship with (the big, bad) Bigby Wolf is lovely.
• La Reine Margot: my go-to favourite film. The Massacre of Paris, Marguerite de Valois, Catherine de Medici, what more could you ask for? This is a really lush production of a rather Dynasty-esque Dumas novel, complete with incest, buckets of blood and lots of poisonings.
• Burlesque and the Art of the Teese (Dita von Teese): lovely coffee table book with lush pictures of Dita. The book is actually split in two: one half is burlesque-focused, and covers the history of burlesque and burlesque outfits through the ages, and other half is focused on fetish-inspired outfits.
• The Women Incendiaries (Edith Thomas): a recent gift for Yule, this is a history of the female revolutionaries during the French Revolution.
• Auto Repair for Dummies (Deanna Sclar): well, obviously. A bit too American in its language, but a decent primer, I think.
• Female Agents: Gah, this film. I don’t know why it was marketed as Female Agents rather than the original Les Femmes de l’ombre. Either way, this is the story of female agents, spies and covert operatives in France during WWII. It’s gorgeous and sexy and scary, but don’t expect everyone to live happily ever after.
• Marie Antoinette: on the other end of the spectrum, this is complete fluff. This Sofia Coppola film is light and frilly, like a giant French fancy. It’s based on the book by Antonia Fraser, and focuses on Marie Antoinette’s life up until she flees Versailles. It therefore stops before the horrible execution business happens, and you are also not subjected to Marie Antoinette’s days in captivity. Instead, you get dresses, frills, cakes, parties, and elaborate hairdos. There is nothing sad or upsetting about this film and I love it like I love cotton candy.
• Deathless (Catherynne M Valente): Communism! Fairy tales! The original warrior princess! WIN. (Possibly not as easy to grab via a physical bookstore, but order it for a new year surprise?)
• My Little Pony: I blame Sarah Cook for this.
• Compass: Also Sarah Cook’s fault. She has equipped me with this to assist with navigating my way back, should I ever get lost in strange and exotic foreign locales.
• Hot Wheels: no explanation required.”

“Everyone knows my story. I get dressed up. The clock strikes twelve. I lose a shoe. And it’s all downhill from there. My name is Cinderella, Cindy to my friends. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m a spy. One of the best, even if I’m being humble. And there are times I love my job.”

– Cinderella, From Fabletown with Love

Swapping the genders of characters around to put female characters in the roles usually filled by men and vice versa isn’t anything shockingly new. But that doesn’t make it any less cool when someone goes and does it well. Which, arguably, is exactly what Cinderella (in her spin-off miniseries from the Fables universe) does. (Note: this recommendation is based on the first volume of her tales, From Fabletown With Love. I haven’t read the second arc yet, Fables Are Forever.)

Cinderella, as far as most of her fellow Fables know, is an empty-headed fashionista, owner of the local shoe shop, and one of Prince Charming’s ex-wives. What most of them don’t know is that she’s also a master spy and sometimes assassin, their very own James Bond. Only better.

We open with Cinderella punching out a gun-toting mook, diving off Big Ben’s clock tower, and hang-gliding out over London. It’s one hell of an introduction and far from the most kickass moment she gets in the book. Along the way, she also finds time to kick the ever-loving crap out of some shapeshifting monsters, storm an oil rig, deal with armed assassins and overthrow an evil regime with a well-thrown clog.

So her badass credentials are certainly up to spec for the super-spy genre, but what else? Well, it wouldn’t be a spy story without a Bond girl. That role here is ably filled by Aladdin, Cinderella’s intelligence-gathering counterpart from the Baghdad Fable community. True to form he’s capable and effective but not quite up to Cinderella’s level and practically carries a glowing neon sign reading “capture and imprison me so I can be daringly rescued!”.

There are two particularly nice little points in the interaction between Cinderella and Aladdin. First up, the hook-up that’s pretty much inevitable with the genre. When it does happen, Cinderella is very definitely the active party in deciding when and initiating things. There was the risk that we’d see that whole scene take a more traditional approach, which would have entirely undermined the character, but fortunately she remains entirely herself and entirely in charge.

The other nice moment is the ideological exchange between them, shortly after they get done kicking monsters in the jaw for the first time. The conversation comes round to Islam and, honestly, it’s handled pretty fairly. It’s only one page worth of stuff, but writer Chris Roberson deals with it well. It’s certainly a nice change from the slightly cringe-inducing pro-Israel speech Bill Willingham included in the main Fables series.

The art is pretty solid too. At no point, as far as I can tell, does Cinderella adopt that terrible spine-breaker pose so commonly inflicted on comic book women. The outfits are sensible too, with the daring infiltration of an old oil platform taking place in appropriate combat gear and her regular wear never getting any more risqué than an evening dress. (Well, one of the covers does feature a wetsuit with an inexplicable cleavage window. Cleavage windows aside, Chrissie Zullo’s work on the covers is gorgeous.)

How does that wetsuit even work with a hole in it?

So that’s Cinderella, Fabletown’s very own badass super-spy. Hopefully she’s just as fantastic in her second story arc. Oh, and she comes from good company too, with others like Rose Red, Snow White, and Frau Totenkinder rocking along in the main series. Frau Totenkinder in particular is worthy of mention, since it’s nice to see a much older female character who’s still awesome.