Writer Bill Willingham announced on his website that the long-running Vertigo title Fables. The companion series Fairest will also end shortly prior to this, and he also announced that he will be mostly retiring from comic book writing work as well.
“Retirement in the storytelling trade means, still working and writing every day, but being a bit more selective in what projects I take on. Pushing 60, I thought it would be a good time to start making concrete plans for those remaining good writing years.
Fables will end with Issue 150, which will be a larger than usual size, as were many of the other milestone issues. Fairest, our companion series, will also come to an end just before the big final Fables issue.”
Speaking with Newsarama, Willingham added some more details as to why he chose to wrap Fables up at this time with an extra-sized issue:
“[T]he “closing it up at #150″ idea… well, #150 is a milestone issue. And it fit pretty closely with a storyline that we’ve been building up to, that I will tease in a little bit, but which could either just be a kind of dramatic sea change in the way the series is going (one of those truthful moments where things will not be the same after it), or it would be a good time to close it up.”
Long time artist Mark Buckingham, who has been working on the book as its regular artist since issue #6, is quoted by Willingham as saying “I respect Bill’s decision and am looking forward to working with him on the book’s epic final year, leading to the series’ grand finale.”
Fables began in 2002 as one of Vertigo’s flagship titles, and has remained in continuous serialisation since. As of 2012, Fables has won 14 Eisner Awards for the series, and an additional 8 for creators working on the series. It has given birth to several spin-offs, including Jack of Fables, Fairest and several graphic novels and mini-series. A video game from Telltale Games called The Wolf Among Us is currently being released, while a film adaptation is also in development.
