Fables #116 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (story), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Steve Leialoha, Andrew Pepoy, Dan Green (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors), Shawn McManus (feature art)

The Story: If your own family can’t rescue you from the clutches of maniacal toys, who can?

The Review: When Ozma delivered her prophecy regarding the fate of the Cubs, it was natural to assume that however dire the foretelling, we could rest on the Cubs getting to grow up a bit before such anxious events come to pass.  Upon reflection, this is a very naïve belief.  When it comes to Fables, disaster tends to strike sooner rather than later, and the more unprepared the characters are, the better.

Although the prophecy’s temporal context is so loose that you can’t really trust that any particular event is actually fulfilling it, we might as well take a good stab at it.  Willingham wouldn’t give us the thing if he hadn’t meant for us to do some wild speculating.  Winter, by succeeding her grandfather as the North Wind, has become a king, so that’s one down.

Fables #109 – Review

By: Bill Willingham (writer), Mark Buckingham (penciller), Steve Leialoha (inker), Lee Loughridge (colorist)

The Story: Heavy is the crown the king must wear on his noggin—or whatever.

The Review: The last couple arcs spent a lot of time building up the tension for when Mr. Dark would rain down his nightmarish power over all the Fables and destroy them all, or at least most of them.  Since all that anxious anticipation pretty much came to nothing, both for them and for us, it now just seems like the title has been spinning its wheels for a while.  While all their current antics offer the usual good times, you also wonder where the next baddie will come from.

As much as Willingham wants to direct our attention to Nurse Spratt—I mean, Leigh Duglas—the idea of her as the Fables’ newest nemesis seems a major step down from the embodiment of bogey-men everywhere.  It’s obvious she’s determined to improve herself in the art of dastardly dealings (familiarizing herself with poisons and the like), and she briefly mentions that “others” will soon join her in an ostensibly spooky way, but it all seems very mundane and unthreatening.

Also somewhat disappointingly, Rose Red and her scouting team find nothing out of sorts on the Farm.  You’d think they’d run into at least one obligatory mystical trap worthy of a panther, crow, tomcat, and redhead armed with a dagger, but no.  In short, things seem to be going swell for all our Fables at home—meaning some horrible disaster must lurk right around the corner, just out of sight, but that doesn’t really do anything for our suspense in the herenow.

Most of the action comes courtesy of Bufkin et al, still getting up to no good in land formerly known as Oz.  We know they plan to start a revolution and to do it they need to sneak out some of the goodies from a bunker full of the most powerful magical weaponry in the Homelands, but everything in between remains a mystery.  The odds certainly are stacked against them, as before they even take their first step, they run into “the Yoop!  And ravening monkey-eating kalidahs!”