Travis Moore

Previous Fables spin-offs have not been successful longterm (even the highly intriguing Fairest series began to lag after the first few collections), so I’m sceptical about the longevity of what looks to be another fantastical spy-themed series. Instead of focusing on a single character (as previously done in Cinderella) they seem to have chosen the Shadow Players as their protagonist - the Fables’ answer to the post-magic era on Earth in the form of a spy network; this gives them a show more bigger range of characters and scenarios to play with, but honestly I don’t think it’s that unique or innovative. They bring back one of the Snow and Bigby’s wolfcubs to give old readers a flashback to the original Fables characters and an intro in the “new generation” of Fables, but this seems like a pretty cheap schtick to make the rather basic spy-caper plot more interesting. I’ll give the second volume a shot when it comes out later this year, but I’m not holding my breath. Nothing can really add up to the original series, so maybe they should stop trying to milk a good thing. show less

Okay, so I was kind of right... Crane was behind some of the drama that began in the last book, but it goes so much deeper than that. The mastermind behind it all is the Crooked Man (an interesting character if I ever saw one), but the real problem isn't just his criminal empire which ranges from prostitution to loansharking to murder. The real problem is Fabletown itself; no society functions entirely without rules and safeguards, and an integral part of most functional modern-day societies show more is a social security net that distributes wealth so that everyone has a reasonable quality of life (even if it doesn't work entirely, obviously). This kind of concept is entirely foreign to the residents of Fabletown, who largely come from very classist systems (often feudal, sometimes even more hierarchical) where the rich have little to no formal responsibility to care for the poor. The central theme of the book is obviously much more than a 2 volume series can handle (much less a video game), but I think it serves its purpose to get readers thinking about some of the political goings on in the Fables community. Willingham did not create a fairytale series that was all peaches and cream, afterall, so the writers' focus puts this series squarely in line with the original themes - bravo! show less

I dropped out of the Wonder Woman series a few volumes back out of boredom and have skipped ahead to see if Becky Cloonan can bring some new energy to the title.

Soooooo . . . Wonder Woman has gotten herself dead or she's ascending to godhood or something at the end of Dark Knights: Dark Metal (not to be confused with her subsequent death for Dark Crisis mind you) -- and now finds herself in the afterlife. But not the afterlife of Greek mythology; no, no, she's in Valhalla. Turns out some show more rogue god is causing problems across the pantheons, so Wonder Woman has to set aside the rest and relaxation of death and get back to work tracking this big bad villain across the multiverse, with stops in Tartarus, Earth-11, the Phantom Zone, the Fifth Dimension, Gemworld, and a limbo called the In-Between. Fortunately she's helped by a cute squirrel (!).

It's a kinda cheesy, kinda fun road trip, and it all becomes a metaphor for healing the rift between the extremism of MAGA blindered nostalgia and Antifa anarchist revolution. Y'know, the kind of big, hopeful gesture WW is known for.

It's good enough, I'm going to keep on and check out some of the spin-off titles with Nubia and the new Wonder Girl. show less

The gritty tone of this book hearkens back to the first volume, Legends in Exile. I'm not as big a fan of the noir-style Fables as I am the epic-saga-style Fables, so I didn't enjoy this as much, but it was still nice revisiting old characters.