Once upon a time, a girl met a boy and his comic books

My life is better in so many ways since meeting Joe, obviously, but one of the best ways is that he introduced me to an entirely new (to me, anyway) world of storytelling. When we first started talking, back during that week of furious emailing before we met in person, he mentioned that he read comics and hoped that I wouldn't judge him for it. I was all, "wtf, why would I judge that?" and at first, I thought he was just warning me about his obsession habit of reading and collecting comics, but after this week's How I Met Your Mother, I wonder if the comic book issue isn't just Joe's version of Ted's Annie Hall dealbreaker.

Wow, that last sentence probably made no sense to a lot of you, and for that I apologize, but it's not my fault you didn't watch HIMYM this week.

Before I met Joe, I thought of comics as merely superhero stories with muscly men and big-boobed ladies running around wearing half of the amount of clothing that is socially acceptable. And those comics exist, sure, and I understand why people like the superhero stuff, but Joe introduced me to, you know, other stuff that I never knew existed. It was like magic. I tried Jeffrey Brown, but he wasn't for me. Neither was Watchmen. I tried to read Walking Dead but gave up after a few issues because terrible dialogue broke my brain. But Raina Telgemeier, Andy Runton, Craig Thompson, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Adrian Tomine, I liked. I'm sure I'm missing out on a wealth of other authors, so please feel free to suggest something else I should be reading. 

My latest obsession is Fables, a series about fairy tale characters living in the real world. FAIRY TALE CHARACTERS LIVING IN THE REAL WORLD. If this sounds familiar to you, it's because there are two TV shows premiering soon that are along the same lines, Grimm and Once Upon a Time. I wish they'd just made Fables into a TV show but no one consulted me, which I think we can all agree is total bullshit. I'm on the 5th volume of the Fables collections (no idea what actual issue that is) and I'm a bit afraid to keep reading at the rate I am, because soon I'll be done and then what will I do? Wait for the next issue? Well, I'm not good at that so I DON'T WANT TO DO IT. Moving on.

Here are things I like about Fables:

1. Everything.

I'm going to watch both Grimm and Once Upon a Time because A) duh, fairy tales and B) hopefully at least one of them will be good, in case I finish Fables and need another real-life-fairy-tale fix.

Grimm starts next Friday on NBC. Some detective finds out that he's a descendent of the Brothers Grimm, so takes on the mission of protecting humanity from evil, supernatural fairy tale characters. No word on what he does to the nice fairy tale characters. Maybe he bangs Cinderella, I don't know. I'm a bit more excited for ABC's Once Upon a Time, but that's mainly because Ginnifer Goodwin is in it and I like her. Yes, I'm that simple. Oh PLUS ALSO it's written by a couple of LOST writers, so I'm pretty much obligated to check it out.

Once Upon a Time is set in Storybrooke, Maine (obviously). A bunch of fairy tale characters, mainly Snow White, Prince Charming, the Evil Queen, Jiminy Cricket, and Rumpelstiltskin, live there but GET THIS, they have no idea that they're fairy tale characters! Wicked. Anyway. Dr. Cameron from House is in it, too, but the Wikipedia page is kind of confusing and spoilery about her, so I don't want to say too much. The show starts on Sunday, so why don't you just watch for yourself instead of expecting me to explain everything? Geez.

ANYWAY. I'll be checking both of them out and crossing my fingers that one of them is worth a season pass. But if not, at least I'll still have Fables.