Fables Writer Willingham Brings Restoration to Image With Barry Kitson

Today at Image Expo, Fables writer Bill Willingham announced that he will bring a new series titled Restoration to Image Comics with artist Barry Kitson. Scheduled for fall 2014, Willingham told the audience in San Francisco that the the idea has existed for a while, but in terms of actually executing the thing, he's still in the very early stages of the process. Restoration starts with magic entities removed and stored in facilities, leaving behind a world that resembles ours (without magic). "This book imagines a very bad day in which something terrible happens with a facility, and they're all loose again, and magic and gods and creatures all come back to the world in one single day," Willingham explained.

Millennia ago, a group of some of the more forward-seeing movers and shakers in the world got together and decided to remove magic from the world—our world. They called themselves The Brotherhood of the Cauldron, because, in the first stages of their massive project, they would feed captured magical items and beings into a large magic cauldron, which would render them down into their most basic magic essence, which could then be bottled and stored away, much like we store the unwanted residue of our nuclear programs.

The world settled down into manageable natural laws that were always the same for everyone. Magic was gone. Until one day something terrible went wrong and the gods and monsters broke loose. Suddenly, all at once, magic came rushing back into the world.

"Bill Willingham was in the early vanguard for creator-owned comics, as well as one of comics' most unique and interesting voices, and it's a huge thrill to be working with him here at Image," said Eric Stephenson, Publisher at Image Comics. "Likewise, it's fantastic to welcome Barry Kitson back to Image for his first project here in over a decade. Restoration is going to be a fantastic ride, and different from everything else on the stands!"

Now the gods wish to keep their freedom—and magic—while the rest of the world seeks to imprison them. Will there be war? And who will win? Kitson may be busy this year; not long ago, his frequent collaborator Mark Waid mentioned that the pair planned on doing more Empire together in the not-too-distant future.