Fables, Vol. 8: Wolves by

Into the woods.
The community of Fables living undercover in our midst has endured plenty of suffering at the hands of their longtime antagonist, the Adversary. Now it's time to return the favor and put the would-be conqueror on notice that the cost of subjugating this last stronghold of magic will be higher than he can bear. The one Fable who can accomplish this mission, however, has hidden himself away in the wild and will take some convincing if he can even be found. Luckily for Fabletown, there's something more than a trip behind enemy lines awaiting Bigby Wolf's return...

Collecting: Fables 48-51

Ughh, that was a disappointing end to a story arc. Bigby and Snow are two of my favorite characters in comics, but they make no sense in this. And don't get me started on their stupid, boring litter

Bigby leaves town and goes to extreme lengths to make himself completely untraceable (and cut off from his kids) because Snow cares about the Fable community and doesn't immediately go along with his crazy scheme to live in the woods together...or something...I wasn't sure exactly what he wanted (he did have a point about her wanting a fairy tale and what not, but I'm not sure that justified such a gigantic hissy fit). So then she's stuck raising his 6 annoying kids for like 5 years, completely devoid of any story line for that entire time while he shacks up with some woods-bimbo. Then he decides to come back, spends like 5 pages single handedly defeating the enemy who has been mercilessly persecuting all of them for several hundred years (personally, I like Bigby because he's flawed and even though he's a gigantic wolf, he also needs the rest of the Fable community to keep the Adversary at bay, so this felt silly). Then he meets back up with Snow, she's like, "oh hey, long time no see...by the way, I've been raising your wolf babies who I had no conscious part in conceiving." He's like, "I have a woods girlfriend, but you smell better. Want to get married?" She shrugs agreement, even though they've never actually been together romantically at this point (except for the time they were both roofied and neither remembers). Two pages later they're hitched, and that's the end of that.

Another volume of Fables that I found to be entertaining, but underwhelming. I think the series works best when dealing with the idea of fairy tale characters in the real world; for the past while it's been focusing more on their attempts to take back their homelands, which is just not as interesting to me. Willingham also tried to rephrase the series as an allegory for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but for that to work the Adversary and his minions have to fulfill the roles of ancient Rome, Nazi Germany, the British Empire, as well as the various nations surrounding Israel in the Middle East.

It looks like the next volume is a bit larger and more epic in scope; hopefully that will signal a return to form for the series.