Fables #129 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Steve Leialoha & Andrew Pepoy (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors)

The Story: With that, Snow officially has the worst love life of all the Fables.

The Review: I find it quite interesting that for this arc, Willingham has chosen Ambrose to narrate the last few issues.  I don’t know if this will be a permanent thing, seeing how his destined role is to judge the past through his journalistic histories, but I do wonder why now, for this particular story?  In some ways, his hindsight vision ends up stealing some of the suspense from the plot, as he hints at the chain of events to come.

Perhaps allowing Ambrose to serve as narrator is an act of compassion on Willingham’s part for a character doomed to be sidelined.  In Ozma’s prophecy, all the Cubs are fated to do great things (and some already have), all but one, who is merely to judge the actions of the rest.  He promise of survival is his doom; he exists to observe, rather than participate, in Fables’ great events.  “My life in a nutshell,” he muses, with no small hint of ruefulness, “insignificant bits and pieces of other stories.”