Fables #14: Witches

As an be seen above the artists that do the cover work on Fables are just fantastic. I'm sure by now there is a collection of the covers out there and I might pick it up one day if the series ever comes to an end and I can have the whole set. It would make an awesome coffee table book.

So here we are at book fourteen of Fables. For those who don't know about the series it takes the idea that all of the fairy tale characters from all of time are real (and more or less immortal, which has a lot to do with the way we remember and continue to tell stories about them) and they existed in a place called the Homelands. Someone called The Adversary (whose identity I won't reveal here) created an Empire and so many of the Fables fled and decided to take refuge here on Earth (or in The Mundy, as they call it - us humans being Mundane compared to them). Now, to bring you up to speed, the Fables slowly but surely struck back against the Empire and the Adversary, casualties on both sides occurred, and the Fables were successful in defeating the Empire. And so, wouldn't you think that it would be happily ever after following that? If that was the case, the series wouldn't even exist in the first place :) What followed that huge story arc was the decision to show, what happens when an Empire falls, and what does the fall out mean? Two volumes ago we were introduced to Mr. Dark, the pure embodiment of all evil, and he's decided to take down the Fables, and he's doing a pretty damn good job of it so far. The last volume of the series was a bit frustrating in that it put a big pause on this storyline just at a time when we wanted it to keep moving. And then comes along this new volume and, well, the frustration continues to some degree. I realize that there has to be a lead-up to a great battle, and I wasn't expecting the Mr. Dark storyline to be resolved in this volume, but it just felt like they didn't really get anywhere with it. Baby steps, really. It's all entertaining and great, don't get me wrong, but it's not Fables at it's best. There is a nice side-story at the end involving Flycatcher that's really quite lovely, he finally seems to be getting over the grief of his wife with another Fable whom I'm had a crush on since she was first introduced.

So not a bad book by any means, but I want more to be happening at this point. It's taking it's time, and perhaps for good reason. The next volume, I believe, is called Rose Red, so I look forward to getting her back in the main storyline... and I wonder if it being about her means that a certain boy in blue might finally make his return...

(*** as a post script, I started reviewing comics late in this blog, so at some point I'll circle back and write up my thoughts on the previous volumes of this series)