Joe Rubinstein

I was looking forward to the replacement of Judd Winick on Green Arrow and Black Canary. Unfortunately, this is like the switch between Bill Mantlo and James Hudnall on Alpha Flight: it's still bad, it's just bad differently. There's a few big problems with the book. The first is Green Arrow's absolute obsession with bringing in Merlyn in this issue: why now? Why does this crime cause him to cross "the line"? He wasn't tempted to with Connor in the last storyline, he wasn't even tempted to show more when Merlyn blew up half of Star City. Merlyn taking out three technogeeks is what it takes to get him riled up? Really? The other, and much bigger, is Cupid: a woman with no training who is suddenly capable of taking out big-name villains with ease. Now, I think Merlyn and Brick are both completely lame villains... but I also know that this lone woman could not just waltz in and take them out when Green Arrow has spent years trying without success. This could be forgiven if Cupid was at all a good villain, but Kreisberg has just replaced Winick's lame antagonists with his own. Finally, there's Black Canary, who continues to be sidelined in (supposedly) her own title, needing Ollie to rescue her from a stupid thug in the very first issue here, and then accidentally deafening a man in contrived circumstances.

Add to this a perfunctory write-out of Connor and Mia (Winick was always good for giving Mia things to do) and Mike Norton's art embracing a "grittier" style that is more his own (apparently) but also more generic, and you have the third disappointing volume of this series in a row.

Green Arrow and Black Canary: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence » show less

Summary: Jack Frost, the son of Jack Horner (i.e. the original Jack of the Tales), is eager to prove himself a hero, and has even got himself a magical sword as a first step. First stop: the kingdom of Landfall, where a giant demands a yearly tithe of gold... and virgins.

Review: Decidedly meh. A lot of the fun of the Fables and Jack of Fables series is watching the characters from different familiar stories interact. By this point, however, it's an entire book about Jack Frost as he goes on show more his adventure, which doesn't star any other familiar faces, and it's a fairly predictable fairy tale adventure to boot... except it's a fairy tale with the inexplicable addition of robot soldiers and space stations, for no good reason. And even Babe's pages, which are usually the funniest part, just felt tired. I think the Fables Crossover marked the place where Jack of Fables ran out of ideas, and started floundering. 3 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: It would actually work just fine - if not better - as a stand-alone story, but in the context of the larger whole, it was disappointing. show less

I'll be honest - I like Jack Frost/Jack Junior as a character. He was a welcome addition to the Fables universe, but this book is a rather weak installment in the Jack of Fables series. This is a slimmer volume than others, containing only five issues (41-45) as Jack Frost tries to save virgin maidens and villages from this villain called Empyrean. The story progresses along nicely, though I really wish we could have had some interludes featuring Jack Sr. and the Pathetic Fallacy.

What caused show more me to give this volume a mere 3 stars was the ending - the matter with the Empyrean and the Witch of the Woods is not really resolved, and after a revelation with the Empyrean, I was disappointed at the fate that he suffered. For what had been a fairly entertaining story, the ending was really sloppy and lackluster. show less

Jack of Fables does not make an appearance in this volume, instead it is entirely about his son, Jack Frost and his quest to be a hero for the ages. Jack Frost gets some important life lessons in this issue as to who to trust. He does solve the problems for the city of Landfall, but the end of the book finds he and McDuff off to find new adventures.

Babe, the miniature blue ox also makes a few appearances but I am myself over him and I did miss the bad boy himself, Jack of Fables.