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Eugene Mirman’s Guide To Modern Life: “Fables”

eugenelogoAlong with David Cross, Zach Galifianakis and Patton Oswalt, Eugene Mirman has liberated stand-up comedy from the zany fratboys and sweater-clad neurotics. Mirman’s latest album, God Is A Twelve-Year-Old Boy With Asperger’s (Sub Pop), isn’t representative of a “new breed” of comedy or a supposedly edgy advancement in humor; it’s a collection of smart, imaginative bits that embody the anger, absurdity and awkwardness of everyday life. You might also say it’s full of guffaws. Mirman, who also published a book this year (the mock-advice tome The Will To Whatevs) and regularly appears on HBO’s Flight Of The Conchords, is guest editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our Q&A with him.

fables1275Fables7275Fables53275Mirman: Fables is probably one of my favorite graphic-novel series. It’s set in modern New York City (sometime after The Warriors and before Governor Patterson), where all the characters from all the world’s collected storybooks and folklore have escaped to (and live in a the neighborhood of Fabletown, which I think is somewhere between Kips Bay and the Upper West Side). Why? Because they were pushed out of their fairy-tale Homelands by the Adversary. It’s a wonderful mish-mash of various ancient tales, cultures and modern-day politics. Plus it answers some of the following questions: “What would happen if Goldilocks and the three bears, the Three Little Pigs, maybe a magic panther also (I don’t remember 100 percent) and some other animals tried to stage a communist revolution within the Fable community?” “What would happen if Snow White (the deputy mayor of Fabletown) and the Big Bad Wolf fell in love while he was trying to solve the murder of her sister, Rose Red?” It’s a fantastic series, which is why it won so many Eisner Awards, whatever they are. (But I bet they aren’t easy to get.)

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