Just finished reading this volume, and it's part of my new scheme, to write a review straight after I've finished reading the book. Now for those in the dark, Fables is a fantastic series by Bill Willingham and the excellent Mark Buckingham (who's such a nice person as well).

What’s it about? It tells the story of what happens to all the fables of children’s stories after they’ve ended, but there’s a twist. They’ve been run out of their ‘homeland’ and are now living amongst us in downtown New York. They’ve got some magic to help prevent the ‘mundies’ (that’s me and you) from seeing their true form. King Cole is the Mayor of ‘Fabletown’, Snow White actually runs the show, and well the Big Bad Wolf is called Bigby Wolf and he’s the Sheriff of the town within a city. Did you know that Snow White has a sister? Apparently this is true, she’s called Rose Red.

The main mystery here is that the ‘Adversary’ is the person that effectively drove them out of their homelands, but we don’t know who the adversary actually is. His identity is a mystery. There’s an emmense amount of backstory involved here and Willingham is adding layers to the story.

What’s great for me is that I know what his style of writing actually is. Nothing stays the same. Time actually passes, months, years whatever the story calls for. He’s not scared to off characters, or change characters. Constantly introduces new characters that you just completely forgot about, and that adds yet another amazing layer to the already great cast of characters.

This book started 1 year before the release of Shrek, so don’t think this is cashing in on that story. It’s very different with a great deal of maturity involved here. It’s a Vertigo comic book series so there’s bound to be an edge here. The covers are provided by the SPECTACULAR James Jean, who’s my favourite artist of the past 2 years, easily. Never ceases to amaze me what the guy comes up with month in, month out.

The Art. With volume 5, Mark’s not as on form as he was in volume 4 where it showed how much fun he was having illustrating every page. Don’t get me wrong there’s nothing bad with the art but if you compare the two you’ll know what I mean. I got the feeling in volume 4 that he finally found his groove on the book. Knew every single character, and was experimenting with the page layouts every single page, and it was great. Added such a personal touch and essentially for me made it his completely. In this volume, not sure if it was something intentional (ie handed down by the editor) or due to lack of time, but that experimentation just wasn’t there to be found. Still certain ‘little’ aspects of the story were just too cute to mention (and I’m not going to because that would be a MAJOR spoiler and I hate spoilers).

I keep giving this series to friends of mine that are girls. They seem to love it more than I do. There’s something in this series that strikes a cord with female readers more than it does with male readers, but it’s a brilliant read for any gender. If you’re looking for something that will remind you of your childhood and then turn it on it’s head, I highly recommend you check out Fables. Chances are very high that you’ll come back for more.