Boy Blue (Fables)

Boy Blue
Boy Blue From Fables #31, Art by Mark Buckingham
Publication information
Publisher	Vertigo Comics
First appearance	Fables #1 (July 2002)
Created by	Bill Willingham
In-story information
Team affiliations	Fabletown
Abilities	Skilled Trumpet player; efficient administrative assistant; Master of the Witching Cloak; warrior of considerable prowess.

Boy Blue is a major character in the Vertigo comic book series Fables. He is based on the nursery rhyme character Little Boy Blue. At the beginning of the series, he is portrayed as an efficient but meek office clerk helping Snow White run Fabletown; however, he has a colorful and violent history that is gradually revealed as the series goes on.

Throughout Fables, Boy Blue is depicted as a young man in his mid-to-late teens with blue eyes and blond hair. In Fabletown, he has his hair cut short and wears modern clothes in his signature color. He usually has a modern, valved trumpet of some kind on or near his person. He wears Chuck Taylor All-Stars.

In flashbacks, notably "The Last Castle," Boy Blue is shown as a medieval squire or page in blue livery, with hair that touches his shoulders.

During "Homelands," Blue, when not transformed or in disguise, is drawn with a blue cloth mask tied over his hair and the top half of his face, matching the dark blue color of the Witching Cloak. He carries a blowing horn. When Blue takes the shape of an animal for travel or concealment, the color blue usually remains prominent in some way: he is shown once as a mouse with a blue traveling cloak and repeatedly as a bird with blue feathers. It is not revealed whether this is because of Blue's affinity for the color or an inherent trait of the Witching Cloak.

Boy Blue's backstory as a fighter against the Adversary's forces is revealed in "The Last Castle" as Blue tells Snow White the story of the Fables who defended the last open gate to the mundane world. This is at the tail end of the Adversary's campaign against the European fables, with most of them having either already escaped, enslaved or killed. Blue fights with Colonel Bearskin's Free Company, eventually becoming the colonel's aide-de-camp. As of "The Last Castle," Blue has survived several battles: "Boxen, Ruby Lake, Oakcourt, and the hellish rout at Hollyfield", among others.

The day before the last battle, a woman claiming to be Red Riding Hood rides into the fort nearly dead from arrow wounds. She and Blue quickly became infatuated with each other, to the extent that she suggests that Friar Tuck should marry them so that Blue will be allotted a seat on the last ship out. Citing his duty, he refuses. Arriving for battle in the morning, he learns his new orders: he will observe the battle from a high parapet and, at the appropriate time, will use a powerful but poorly understood item known as the Witching Cloak to teleport himself to the ship with the message that the last defenders have fallen and they are on their own. Fabletown will need to know what happened, Bearskin tells him, but he also sees this as a way for Blue and Riding Hood to be together. Unfortunately, when Blue arrives on the ship, he discovers that Riding Hood, not wanting to live without him, had given up her spot to a stranger and stayed behind.