Jack Horner (Fables)
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Jack Horner is a comic book character from Fables. His first appearance was in issue #1 of Fables, he now appears in his own book Jack of Fables. He was created by Bill Willingham, author of the series.
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[edit] Personality
Jack Horner, in addition to his role in the nursery rhyme of the same name, is also the Jack of Beanstalk and Jack and Jill fame. Also known as Jack Be Nimble, Jack Frost, Jack O'Lantern, Jack the Giant Killer as well as being most of the other mythological Jacks, to the extent that he's occasionally referred to as Jack of the Tales, Jack is a rather benign and not always terribly competent schemer always looking for quick ways to make a buck.
Fable Jacks that have been definitively established as separate entities are Jack Sprat and Jack Ketch.
[edit] Character History
[edit] Pre-Fabletown
Jack arguably has the distinction of being busier than any other Fable, with his assorted escapades, including the famous beanstalk incident and his time as a giant-killer of considerable renown.
For a while he gained Lumi's powers, guiling the still naive Snow Queen into turning him into Jack Frost, the Harbinger of Winter. Somehow, in a still undisclosed way, Jack lost his new powers, retaining his swashbuckling attitude and his resilience.
What happened to Jack when the Adversary first began his assault on the Fable Homelands is unknown.
[edit] Fabletown
During his time in Fabletown, Jack was generally known as a schemer, albeit not a terribly competent one. He briefly fought with the Confederate army during the American Civil War, feeling that he might be able to profit from such an adventure. He started up an online business, at about the time when the market for such things fell apart. One of his default schemes appears to involve the selling of the remaining magic beans, from the batch used to grow the famous beanstalk. However, as Jack's tendencies are well-known in Fabletown, he's never succeeded, which is fortunate as he doesn't actually possess the beans any longer; they're among the magical items held by Fabletown. Bigby Wolf, Fabletown's then-sheriff, has always been distrustful of Jack, never believing anything he says (even when he's telling the truth) and making it a point to hold Jack under suspicion whenever anything goes wrong, even going so far as to arrest him immediately on false charges.
For about four years towards the end of his time in Fabletown, Jack was romantically involved with Rose Red. They were known for their raucous parties and general irresponsibility. When Rose was apparently murdered, Jack was quickly picked up as a possible suspect, although it was eventually revealed that the two had conspired to fake her death in order to get her out of an engagement to Bluebeard that the two had set up for financial gain. Once the plot was discovered, in a chain of events that briefly included Jack becoming a prince, and everything had been sorted out, Rose dumped Jack and moved up to the Farm, where she refused to see him, telling him that one of the main reasons that she hooked up with him in the first place was that he irritated her then-estranged sister Snow White. With the thawing of her relationship with her sister and her new responsibilities as administrator at the Farm, she no longer had any time for him.
With the election of Prince Charming to the position of Mayor, Jack came to the conclusion that Fabletown was finished. Stealing the contents of one of the late Bluebeard's treasure rooms, an amount of money in the region of two and a half billion dollars, he left Fabletown in the company of a Lilliputian named Jill who had assisted him with the theft.
[edit] Nimble Pictures
Jack, with Jill in tow, headed for Hollywood, where he used his wealth to set up a new studio called Nimble Pictures, taking the alias of John Trick. His principal aim was to shoot a trilogy of films about himself, which he felt would increase his popularity among the mundanes, making him more powerful. He stayed in Hollywood for around five years, until Jill, fed up with his treatment of her, managed to call Fabletown and ask them for help. Fabletown engineered a takeover of Nimble Pictures, with Jack's right-hand man, Moss Waterhouse, as the new head of the studio. Beast came to Hollywood where he explained to Jack that the Fabletown authorities wanted Jack's head. Beast, however, disliked bloodshed and told Jack to leave, taking just a small amount of money with him, and that he never wanted to see Jack again. Jack, with no options remaining to him, agreed.
[edit] The Golden Boughs Retirement Community
Jack began to hitchhike, with no particular destination in mind. He was picked up by a van which, he quickly learned when they put a gun to his head, had been looking for him specifically. Despite attempting to escape en route, Jack ended up in the Golden Boughs Retirement Community, effectively a high-security prison populated entirely by Fables. In fairly short order, he slept with Goldilocks, briefly saw Alice, was severely beaten by Paul Bunyan and met the head of the Community, a man named Mr. Revise. Revise informed Jack that his goal was to rid the world of magic, an aim that he'd nearly achieved before the Fables arrived hundreds of years earlier and that Jack, with his movie trilogy, had also disrupted. Jack immediately swore to escape from the place, asking the other Fables there who was with him. With assistance from the Tooth Fairy and the fairies of A Midsummer Night's Dream, he and dozens of other Fables escaped The Golden Boughs. He also learned that Goldilocks was a spy for Mr. Revise, though his logic was convoluted (he reasoned that all of Revise's assistants wear glasses). Once again he is hitchhiking across the country, with no particular destination in mind. Arriving in Las Vegas, he uses the Pathetic fallacy and his fame as John Trick to rebuild his wealth again, marrying a rich heiress and "talking" the casino equipment into letting him win. Unfortunately, his new bride's family had a very powerful enemy. One who performs rituals and appears to feast on some lucky winners brains, she dons a royal queens attire with Clubs as her accesories. Some say she may be the Queen of Clubs, or maybe Lady Luck Herself. Jack is now widowed after a bomb killed his father in law, his new bride, and fried Jack himself. Now recovered from his injuries, all of his departed wife's fortune, is now his own, making Jack a very rich man once again.
[edit] Schemes
Jack has initiated many attempts to get rich by underhanded means. In addition to those mentioned above, his schemes have included:
- Stealing Nimblin's Seven League Boots to win the Boston Marathon
- Showing mundies old photographs of himself to convince that he was a vampire, then accepting their money to bite them and make them immortal. This never made it off the ground. Jack conceived the plan while in Bigby's presence; the sheriff immediately realized what Jack was thinking about and threatened him with a century in jail.
- Stealing Santa's naughty and nice lists, which he would then sell to the IRS and various law-enforcement agencies.
