Bigby’s father is the North Wind, who once was attracted to a she-wolf named Winter. Transforming into a wolf, the North Wind impregnated her and Winter gave birth to seven children including Bigby. Suddenly bored with this life, the North Wind left for his kingdom and left Winter and his children. Winter was heartbroken. Bigby, born the runt of the litter, was often picked upon by his older brothers who called him the “Big Bad Wolf” quickly shortening it to “Bigby”, but his mother protected him from any bullying.
Her life fading away slowly, Winter told the cubs about their father but Bigby didn’t wish to hear about the North Wind, resenting him for leaving his mother. After her death the older cubs set off in search of their powerful father whilst Bigby stayed behind to stop his mother’s corpse from being devoured. He wasn’t large enough and Bigby swore that each day he would kill something larger than the day before. Bigby soon began to grow larger and feast on prey until he set his eyes upon the Three Little Pigs. Bigby found his father had given him wind-related traits such as his amazingly powerful huffing and puffing. However, when he encountered Red Riding Hood, she and the Woodsman bested him, sewing stones into his stomach and tossing him in a river. It was then that Bigby learned he could not drown. After this incident, he swore only to hunt humans, maintaining to always eat a greater number than the day before. Soon he was killing entire towns and armies.
When the Adversary invaded the European Homelands, Bigby turned his attention to their armies. He did not work in tandem with any Fable army and was simply guarding what he regarded as his territory. At one point, he freed a chain gang of prisoners containing Snow White and her sister Rose Red, and led them to the gate between the Homelands and the Mundane world that only he knew of. It was then Bigby began to feel an attraction to Snow, though he would remain in the Homelands for many years before crossing over into the Mundane world.
After crossing over to the Mundane world, Bigby roamed the wildness of Eastern Europe until he was tracked down by Snow White and Feathertop and given an offer to move with them to a colony the Fables where creating in the New World, far away from prying Mundane eyes. In order to shape shift into a human (something he would have been able to do had he learned as a child), Bigby had to be cut with a lycanthrope stained knife. Because it was Snow that was going to cut him, he allowed this to happen.
Because of his past, it was many years before the Fables would trust him. He is still not allowed on the property of the community of non-human Fables called “ The Farm”, but he eventually earned the trust of the Fable community. As the city of New York grew around them, Bigby became Fabletown’s sheriff and eventually, it’s spymaster, coordinating activities of “the Tourists” (three Fables that travel the world checking on Fables that live outside the community among other duties as required of them), as well as orchestrating secret operations against the Adversary and those that help him.
After working together closely for many years, Bigby finally confessed his feelings for Snow White. Initially she rejected him but after being put under a spell by Bluebeard and stranded and hunted through the Cascade Mountains by Goldilocks, she told Bigby she would be willing to give it a try. Unfortunately, this budding romance was sidelined shortly thereafter when Snow discovered she was pregnant for which she blamed Bigby, though they had both been under the spell when it happened. Slowly Bigby and Snow reconciled, but when Snow gave birth to seven children, only one of who looked human (and one of whom was an unseen zephyr), she and her “ wolf cubs” were banished to the Farm where Bigby was not allowed to go. As Prince Charming had just won the election in Fabletown as well, Bigby left, handing over his office as Sheriff and Spymaster to the Beast.
After leaving Fabletown, Bigby spent time travelling from country to country. He lived in London and Russia briefly, during his time in Russia he lived as the Alpha of a wolf pack. He eventually settled in Alaska, he had a relationship with Sarah Taranaq during this time. He was found by the zephyr after Snow asked the child to go and find Bigby. Bigby and the child began to have interactions and Bigby named the zephyr Ghost. Mowgli eventually found Bigby in Alaska, coming to him with a proposition from Prince Charming to do a special mission in the Adversary’s territory so that he and his children could be reunited and he would be able to live on the farm. Using a magic beanstalk Bigby climbed to the Cloud Kingdom and then parachuted into the Homeland. He made his way to the Adversary’s cabin and informed him that the Fables would no longer take his abuse and would begin to attack him for every attack brought against them. He then set fire to the magic trees, which has supplied the Adversary’s army with magical wood.
Following this mission Bigby returned to Fabletown. A portion of the land on the farm was given to he and his family, renamed Wolf Valley, and he was therefore allowed to live on the Farm with his children and Snow White again. He proposed to Snow White following his return and she accepted. A house was built for them, under the organization of Flycatcher and Boy Blue, and the family was able to move into Wolf Valley. After their wedding ceremony, presided over by former mayor, King Cole, the two honeymooned in Paris, leaving the children under the care of their grandfather, the North Wind. Upon their return, Bigby formally resigned from all covert operation in order to raise his children with Snow White.
When the Imperial Ambassador, Lord Hansel, arrived in Fabletown Bigby requested more money be put into tracking Hansel and his men. Prince Charming approved this request, giving Bigby full access to funds and permission to hire more agents if necessary. Despite Bigby’s wish to stay in retirement, he was talked into recruiting and training soldiers for the war that had come upon the Fables. He occasionally visited the Homelands, though only for short periods of time as he preferred to remain at the Farm and Fabletown.
Bigby, Snow and the cubs took a brief trip to see Mr. North, during this time Bigby convinced his father to train and send zephyrs to the homelands to act as spies. He also came across his brothers, who has learned to shape shift and were terrorizing Bigby’s children, and turned them into goldfish for the cubs to play with.
During the war, Bigby was in charge of “Fort Bravo,” the Fabletown fort in the homelands. The fort was established as a means of protecting the magic beanstalk that was used to exit the Homelands into the Cloud Kingdom. The troops at Fort Bravo maintained their holding on the fort throughout the war and thwarted all attempts to attack the fort because the soldiers were even close enough to begin attacking. There was a momentary change in tide when a soldier from the Adversary’s army used a Korta Vulma Urso arrow, Bigby being the intended target. The arrow was blocked by Boy Blue; however it cut through his arm and scratched Bigby on the neck. The magic of the arrow left both unconscious for several days leaving the troops to defend the beanstalk against a massive army lead by the Emperor, the Adversary’s puppet, himself. After coming back to consciousness, Bigby and Blue learned that many had sacrificed their lives to protect Fort Bravo from being overrun. Bigby decided that he would engage in one final attack on the Emperor. First he attacked in his wolf form, weakening the Emperor as much as possible and then he switched to human form and used a crowbar to disassemble parts of the Emperor, a tactic learned from the Mouse Police during the Battle of Fabletown. The crumbling Emperor was then hit by a large artillery fire. Boy Blue finished him off with the Vorpal Sword. The troops burned the Emperor’s remains and had a wienie roast on the fire. Later, Bigby, Blue and Pinocchio retrieved Geppetto and took him to Fabletown where he was forced to sign the Fabletown Compact, work with the witches and end the war.
After the war, Bigby replaced the deceased Prince Charming in running the Homeland Recovery Program. He remained in Wolf Valley, preferring, as always, to continue raising his children. He allowed his brothers to change form and aid Mowgli and Bagheera on their return trip to their homeland Indus. Bigby told them that if they completed their task to his liking he would allow them to become wolves again. Mowgli reported back to Bigby that the brother’s powers had created fear and panic in the remaining Adversary troops.
When Mister Dark destroyed Fabletown all of the Fables retreated to the Farm. Bigby and Beast got into a violent fight at this time, it was seemingly triggered by Bigby feeling he was being singled out by Beast constantly. They eventually realized that the powers of Mister Dark had affected them and returned to normal.
The Great Fables Crossover
Jack Horner shows up at the Farm, and tells Snow White about the Literals, beings who embody literary principles rather than legends. One of them, Kevin Thorn, is a writer who is planning (and able) to erase the entire universe so that he can start a new creation with a clean slate. Most of the Fabletown authorities dismiss the claims, but Snow and Bigby decide to investigate.
Bigby and Snow travel to the Dino Diner out somewhere on Route 66, where they find Jack along with Mr. Revise, the Pathetic Fallacy, the Page Sisters, and other Literals whom Jack had encountered in his adventure. Bigby goes to have a word with Jack outside, but this quickly devolves into a fight. Feeling disrespected again, Jack leaves, while Bigby, Snow and the literals go to confront Kevin. They first go to Kevin’s apartment in New York, but it is booby trapped. However, Bigby manages to get enough of Kevin’s scent before the bomb goes off and directed them toward the Catskill Mountains, where Kevin has gone looking for a quiet place to write.
Kevin, aware that someone is coming after him, decides to harass Bigby, first by writing him into a chimpanzee and then dropping a 1993 Volkswagen Passat onto him. Kevin then turns Bigby into a donkey, an elephant, a pink cartoon elephant and finally a blond little girl, much to Bigby’s annoyance.
The group venture further and encounter the Page Sisters, having decided to finish off Kevin themselves instead of waiting back at the Diner, in the middle of a firefight with the Genres, whom Kevin has called to help him with ideas for his new universe. Bigby gets bored with the whole thing being stuck in a stalemate and decides to put an end to it. In spite of being in the form of a little girl, Bigby maintains his normal strength and rage, massacring the Genres by biting their heads off and tearing them limb from limb, finally transforming back into a giant wolf. He figures that Kevin must have been trying to force him into using his natural shape changing abilities, which would have turned him into an identity-less creature like his father. Instead, Bigby snarls that he is exactly what he has decided to be: “A man sometimes, and a wolf all the time.”
Abilities and traits
In his wolf form, Bigby is massive, shown to be considerably taller than a human being, and at times substantially larger than that as well. In this form, he can carry people with no apparent stress and is a formidable fighter. Other wolves defer to him, calling him “Lord of Wolves” or “God of Wolves.” His mixed ancestry gives him the ability to blow massive gusts of wind (the “huff ‘n’ puff” of the Three Little Pigs story) and can also briefly command local winds to do his bidding. Bigby can drown but he is able to hold his breath for an extremely long time; three weeks straight in one chapter. He also swam across the Bering Strait without getting cold (he even referred to it as “an enjoyable swim.”) Every one of his senses is far above the normal human ability. He is also extremely quick to heal and cannot be killed by conventional weapons. He can, however, be slain by silver or fire. As a Fable, he does not age.
In addition to his wolf and human forms, Bigby is sometimes drawn as intermediate form similar to the wolfman of legend- it is shown that his powers allow him to reassume any shape from wolf to man whenever he is forced to take another form (such as those authored by Kevin Thorn.) In this form he possesses great strength, rapid healing, and the claws and teeth of a wolf. Bigby’s father, the North Wind, has stated directly that due to his heritage Bigby could have learned to shape shift of his own will into any form he wanted, but he rejected that form of his heritage and grew too old to learn. (Bigby’s brothers, who did decide to learn, can assume any shape they wish.)
Because of his extraordinary senses, Bigby is able to pick up on the emotions of thousands of nearby strangers, to the extent that he smokes cigarettes constantly in order to drown them out. The only one whom he cannot drown out, or tune out, is Snow White. Due to his rapid hair growth, he has to shave several times a day
Other Media
Video Games
He appears in the game The Wolf Among Us by Telltale Games.