Bill Willingham - Coventry torrent

Issues 1-3 of 'Coventry'

Fantagraphics Books, 1996-1997

Written and Illustrated by Bill Willingham

Coventry is a Fantagraphics comic book mini-series by Bill Willingham. Coventry is a fictitious state in an alternate history version of the United States of America in which magical and legendary powers, creatures, villains and heroes are real and a part of everyday life. Coventry ran for only 3 issues, from November 1996 to July 1997. Two short novels set in the same universe, detailing the exploits of the legendary hero Beowulf, were written by Willingham and published by Clockwork Storybook in 2002.

The Coventry comics and the following novels have been praised by critics as "a delicious blend of horror, offbeat humor, great characters and cat-and-mouse plotting" and "sharp, stark and needle-point powerful".

Coventry may have served as a prototype for Willingham's current series, Fables (published by DC Comics, under the Vertigo imprint), which deals with various characters from fairy tales and folklore who have been forced out of their Homelands by a mysterious enemy known as the Adversary.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The last paragraph above the line is from the Coventry Wiki page. To me it seems very clear that some of the seeds of Fables lie in this book. There are too many similar ideas running through each book to think otherwise.

Design wise, the look of the characters in 'Coventry' are VERY close to those in Willingham's adult book 'Ironwood' (available here at TPB), only in a more modern setting and with a lot more clothes on. The artwork is also beautifully detailed as it was in that book, only more so here. Each panel is filled with extra finishing touches that most artists would leave out in order to get the page done. Also, the panels are filled with hidden objects, characters and 'wink, wink' jokes (like one panel where there is a buffalo painting on the wall above a mounted (probably singing) fish, both of them above a man wearing a reindeer sweater.

Also, one of the more interesting aspects of this series is that every page is four evenly sized panels (split in half side to side and top to bottom) which are occasionally used as a storytelling device themselves. My favorite example of this is in issue two, page two, panel two, when the dog is suddenly the center of the drawing, starting right at you, while the humans continue to converse off panel. Behind the dog on a shelf sits a grinning canister, or pitcher, that is clearly also looking at the reader. Cut to panel four of page three and a man, who is still having a conversation with another character, is now holding the canister, reaching into it, the dogs face in the lower right hand corner. Panels one and two of page five, the man is giving the dog a biscuit, teaching it to stay while the other person continues to talk.

Just tons of detail all around. The only negative is that even though issue three ends with a tease synopsis of issue four, issue four never saw print.