Really?
There’s a ton of references to the government being there to run things - not help you, if you don’t have money you don’t get help, lying to the populace being okay, abortion being wrong, pre-emptive strikes are good etc.

I'm only up to the Arabian Nights and Days tpb so maybe I've missed some of this, but I don't remember any abortion stuff. I guess the government in Fables is a bit fascist, but I never got the impression that the story was condoning that.

Look at the election issues - Prince Charming basically offered a left wing opposition to King Cole (and look how it was characterised - buffoons catering to the little people to hide their own power lust - as well as the fact that changing potions for all (I call it health care), would bankrupt their society).

Yeah I guess I can see that - it's not to a level that would bother me though.

I don't think I've seen Bigby's take on Israel in the stuff I've read so far....

(I know, that’s a generalization, but I used to be a Christian, so I know that culture from the inside).

So did I, but it's not what I thought about other people.
It feels a bit like fighting against a pre-conceived notion by using that notion as your weapon.

I disagree with him as well, but it’s not those view points that bothered me in it - it was that everyone who disagreed with Christianity was portrayed as an idiot or a liar or their life was empty/lacking.

Well, that's kind of the viewpoint he's presenting; it's what Christians think about non-Christians (I know, that's a generalization, but I used to be a Christian, so I know that culture from the inside).

Gene Yang (’Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks’, ‘American Born Chinese’, ‘Loyola Chin and the San Peligran Order’) is pretty good at including Christian themes in his work.

I thought it was interesting that he essentially added the Christian god to the pantheon of Chinese gods in American Born Chinese. Or rather, he had the Chinese gods be in service to a greater god, who was never stated to be the Christian god. I actually thought that was an interesting bit that didn't take anything away from the book, and I didn't find out until later that there isn't actually a "god of all the gods" in Chinese mythology. That's a pretty good book, by the way. It oughtta win an award or something.

It does? I’ve never spotted that. But then I’ve never noticed Fables having hard right ideas either.

Really?
There's a ton of references to the government being there to run things - not help you, if you don't have money you don't get help, lying to the populace being okay, abortion being wrong, pre-emptive strikes are good etc.
Look at the election issues - Prince Charming basically offered a left wing opposition to King Cole (and look how it was characterised - buffoons catering to the little people to hide their own power lust - as well as the fact that changing potions for all (I call it health care), would bankrupt their society).
The only time it's gotten in the way for me though was Bigby's take on Israel - which was just annoying - but following it up with a bombing as a retailation being a good thing was a bit much.

He seems to be trying to create good, fun comics that include Christian messages and morals, and I can applaud that, even if I don’t particularly agree with his viewpoints.

I disagree with him as well, but it's not those view points that bothered me in it - it was that everyone who disagreed with Christianity was portrayed as an idiot or a liar or their life was empty/lacking.

One notable point that he made on his message board when he was talking about what I wrote was that he feels that Christians don't have a lot of popular fiction geared toward them, so he's trying to provide it. I guess he has a point there, since most Christian-based books or comics (or music or movies or whatever) are really preachy. He seems to be trying to create good, fun comics that include Christian messages and morals, and I can applaud that, even if I don't particularly agree with his viewpoints.

I love “Lost”, for instance, which takes a pro-faith viewpoint

It does? I've never spotted that. But then I've never noticed Fables having hard right ideas either.

Harold MAY have been shot in the eye. The Bayeux Tapestry isn't clear. The panel that Ellis uses in the book MAY be Harold, or it may be an unnamed English knight. Even if it IS Harold, the next panel shows him getting chopped down by enemy knights. The closest (in time) written account of the battle claims he was killed by four knights, including Count Eustace of Boulogne. I'm not saying he didn't get an arrow in the eye, but it probably didn't kill him. It's just a nice, dramatic story.

As for Edward II, Marlowe is, you know, writing a fictional play. I LOVE Marlowe (more than Shakespeare in some ways), but I don't trust him, especially if he was gay, in which he may have been writing Edward II with some kind of agenda in mind. That's the only place I've heard the story of Edward's demise, and it's not necessarily a valid source, as it was written over 250 years after the fact. And it's fiction.

I'm not saying either of these things is false, really. They COULD be true. I'm just saying that they are NOT accepted facts, and Ellis might be, as you put it, "perpetuating apocrypha" (a great term, by the way). And I'm not saying Ellis made those parts of the book up. I'm just saying if he repeats those "facts" as gospel without hinting they might not be true, he might be making other shit up.

Still, I WANT both stories to be true. They're quite fun.

Earthboy Jacobus was even worse because it started doing the same thing for liberals in general–his depiction of school as a place where kids don’t learn anything except “self-esteem” was just insulting (and don’t try and tell me it was a joke. Jokes are, as you humans say, “funny”).

First time through I found that joke funny - but that was before I realised that it wasn't a book about an odd looking kid, it was a pulpit.
The character who'd been to war and been a policeman all his life - he doesn't disbelieve in god because of what he's seen, it's because it turned out that when he was a kid his daddy sent him to a church revival, and he left early and caught his dad in bed with another woman.

He could take a page from Fables. It's got many hard right ideas in there, (abortion bad even after rape, people don't deserve to choose their leader, ends justify means etc) and a simplistic republican guide to undersanding Israel as well - but it works for those characters and the story, and apart from the Israel one, can slide right by most of the time.

I need to take issue with a couple of things-

"there’s no evidence whatsoever that Harold Godwinson was killed by an arrow through the eye,"

APART FROM THE BAYEAUX TAPESTRY

"The story about how Edward II died is a nice if gruesome tale, but I’ve never read any confirmation of it."

Can I reccomend Edward II by Christopher Marlowe?

Both of these things are taught to us in school here in England. So far as I was aware, they're pretty much the accepted facts. I'm not saying you're wrong necesarily, Greg- you may very well, be right, and the versions of events described in Crecy may be popular myths. But these are points of history that most people in Britain know, and know as Ellis describes them. So he's not "making shit up" as you put it. At worst, he's perpetuating apocrypha.

. The story proper begins three years later (in December 1988, although that’s not really relevant beyond some references to music and fashion)

I was thinking about this as well. I was thinking he could have done it to add an extra layer to the nightmare like atmosphere of the story (notice there's nobody else about at all) - not saying the 80's were a nightmare, just that setting it twenty years ago puts it just at the brink of a time I can remember, and so for me, ads a level of weirdness.

Also, and possibly more likely, it takes away both the internet and mobile phones - which if they were around, several major plot points would have played out differently (phones getting unplugged, calling police to ask about murders, the killer finding out etc).

That said, I think although the plot is familiar, the way it's played out by Laphams layouts and art puts it a notch above the rest.

Black Cherry:

In his forward, TenNapel writes that his “anti-Catholic secularist readership” might wonder why he’s telling yet another story of faith. I guess he’s talking to me, although I’m not really “anti-Catholic” per se, but I am “secularist.”

I don't think he's talking to you, but to those of us who were shocked and annoyed about the 90-degree turn his other graphic novel, 'Earthboy Jacobus' took halfway/three quarters through when it suddenly started preaching at us.
No foreshadowing or anything, one moment you're reading about an alien kid from another dimension, then 'bam!', a whole heap of Christian moralizing coming at you from every direction.
Now the book had it's problems before then, but it's energy and oddness were still making it entertaining - but when a character yells at a character who's had his soul taken by creatures from another dimension 'Pappy, don't tell me you've renounced the Christ' - then you've got to wonder.
(especially as early on in the story there's comedy in a child drowning. A fat child. But don't worry, she goes to another dimension and comes back good - and thin!)