I really am making a concerted effort to get these reviews down into a much more manageable size, but the thing is, with great books out there like Fables, there really is little I can do to keep myself from going on and on about them.

This issue is particularly wonderful. Showing the epic like travels of the unstoppable lad with the Vorpal blade, hewing a snicker snack snicker snack through multiple worlds while on a quest for vengeance, I think that Fables has now become an equal to Conan and Y the Last Man in mine own perception. This perfect little book, with its perfect artwork (Buckingham) boasting the most stylized frame work and intriguing simplicity, its more than perfect plots and tales (Willingham) which weave into liveliness all that is myth and folk lore, and its perfect humor which teeters on the point where wit, deep story telling, feeling, cynicism and wordplay all collide, is possibly the most excellent work of modern fiction in print. There are moments when this book has seemed trite and trifling, but in stories such as this, it is at its best even if you have no idea where it is going. Sometimes that is the very thing which leaves you attracted to this title.

I have read countless comic titles that left me guessing as to what direction they might go, but with most I simply don’t care. With Fables, that is never the case. It is a sort of thorn in your bed that keeps you turning in the night, searching and wondering. It is a book that gets a hold on you, and you happily allow it full control.

If you are a poor and homely person with barely a dime to your name, I suggest that you save a few of those dimes and once a month go to a local purveyor of this manner of tomfoolery and purchase Fables. It is the only book you need, except Y the Last Man, and Conan.

-Peblee