Fables #152 – Bill Willingham, Writer; Mark Buckingham, Artist; Steve Leialoha, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: Things are heating up in the Fablesverse, after a first issue that showed how everyone was adjusting to the Fables being exposed to the public and introduced a new major player in the form of an adult Peter Pan—who was the one character off-limits to the original series due to a rights issue. This issue continues to be all over the place in a good way—skipping across dimensions with ease. The story opens with a hilariously bizarre segment as an unfortunate morgue worker comes across a fast-resurrecting Cinderella who survived her duel with Totenkinder thanks to a secret enchantment—which will now kill her if it’s not removed from her body after doing its work. So a normal man who just found out the supernatural exists suddenly has to perform emergency surgery on someone who was a corpse about five minutes ago. Sounds like a pretty normal day in the New York medical examiner’s office.
Meanwhile, the subplot of Jack in the Green continues, as our young mysterious heroine encounters the old man who seems to be the past Jack in the Green, and the two form an uneasy partnership. The older Jack seems to have ties to one of the most infamous objects in Fables history as well—one that led to one of the two darkest moments in the original 150-issue run. While Fables has struggled a bit with villains ever since the end of the war with the Emperor halfway through, that seems to be fixed in a big way here as we learn a little more about Peter Pan. Maybe the hidden power of the entire universe and someone who seems deeply interested in order, he faces off against Gepetto this issue—a fight that ends quite decisively and sets the stakes very high for the remaining ten issues. Add in intriguing subplots from the Farm and the new world Bigby and his family inhabit, and things are looking good for the run.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
