The original outline for the Vertigo Fables series would have cast a classic Disney hero as one of its ultimate villains.
Fables took countless classic literary and folklore characters into the 21st century, devising surprising directions and arcs for the characters. But not every idea came to fruition — resulting in the creators having to come up with some interesting alternates.
One of the biggest plot twists in Fables was the revelation of the Adversary’s identity as Geppetto, a supporting character from the story Pinnochio. However, that wasn’t always the original intent, as a hero from an iconic Disney film was initially meant to be the comics’ first Big Bad.
The backstory of Fables revealed that in the 15th and 16th centuries, the “Fables” — mystical beings from faraway lands that lived on Earth as stories — were forced to abandon their realms for the mundane world. This was because of the advances of the Adversary, a terrifying warlord who’d amassed an unstoppable armada to spread his empire. The Adversary’s eventual conflicts with the New York-based Fables in the modern-day escalated to war between the two, with Fabletown ultimately discovering the truth about the Adversary — that he was truly Geppetto, the old woodcarver who’d made Pinnochio. Having spent decades building puppet kings and inadvertently becoming a behind-the-scenes ruler, Geppetto embraced his role as Emperor and became one of Fables’ primary antagonists.
The Geppetto reveal was one of the biggest twists in Fables and set the stage for numerous developments surrounding Pinnochio, his legions of “brothers” who made up some of Geppetto’s most fearsome forces, and the eventual arc of the series first half. But the reveal almost never happened — because originally, Geppetto wasn’t supposed to be the Adversary. In The Vertigo Encyclopedia, series writer Bill Willingham revealed that he’d originally conceived the Adversary as a villainous incarnation of Peter Pan. In many portrayals — especially the Walt Disney Animation incarnation, which remains a popular figure within the company’s canon — Peter is a mischievous but heroic young man, fighting against pirates in the mystical world of Neverland with his loyal Lost Boys.
But in Willingham’s early ideas for Fables, a demented Pan would be revealed to have spread his Neverland across countless realms and worlds. He would also be revealed to be stealing children from across each of these worlds, creating a perpetual army of Lost Boys to serve him. It’s even teased in the first storyline, “Legends in Exile,” when the Adversary is suggested to hail from “beyond the farthest shores of Never.” This would also lead to the introduction of the Fables incarnation of Captain Hook, typically Pan’s deadliest rival. In this version, Hook would be recast as a hero — liberating the stolen Lost Boys from Pan’s grasp. It would have been an interesting subversion of their classic roles, turning the spritely hero into one of the franchise’s deadliest enemies.
However, it would never come to be. One of the gimmicks of Fables was always that the characters were largely derived from folklore, legend, and fairy tales. As such, each character was technically in the public domain and could be altered in any way the creators saw fit. However, while actually producing Fables, it was discovered that Peter Pan and Captain Hook were still technically copyrighted — so plans to utilize them at all were largely scuttled beyond a reference to the two in the prequel graphic novel, 1001 Nights of Snowfall. Ultimately, Geppetto was likely the better pick, as his unique position in the story allowed for serious growth that Pan might have lacked. But it’s worth considering what kind of impact Pan could have had on the series — and how it could have been the darkest take on the character ever.
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