Fables #154

 

Fables #154 actually came out a week and a half ago (8/24), but Dad Duties (State Fair, frightening) prevented me from getting to The Great Escape, so I was lucky to find a copy still on the stands yesterday. (Not many, though, which I assume means that it's doing okay.) 

It was a pretty big week for me: 6 titles, 5 of them DC--Action, Detective, Blood Syndicate, Superman: Warlord Apocalypse, and Fables. (For the record, the other title was IDW's Usagi Yojimbo.) And you know, I was really anxious to read Blood Syndicate. And I've REALly been enjoying the Warworld story in Action (which finishes up in the Superman: Warlord Apocalypse one-shot), so I started to reach for that first...and then reached for Fables instead. I found myself REALLY wanting to know what happened in the next installment of this story.

And? Well, we follow several of The Kids as they embark upon or continue their adventures. The primary focus (7 of the 22 pages) was on Ambrose Wolf, who outwits the monster who has captured him in a very unique (and humorous) manner. But we also get looks at other characters: 6 pages on Squire Polly and some other animals; 4 pages on Connor Wolf as he (I shit thee not) jumps into a teacup on the back of a turtle with whom he'd been conversing; 2 pages of Blossom Wolf as she converses with a disembodied voice and expresses her desire for "a clean and pretty adventure"; and 3 pages of Greenjack and Mrs. Bear, who undergo a rather dramatic re-location and transformation. It makes for a pretty good spread, and for some very interesting and compelling reading.

I also am quite enchanted by Mark Buckingham's interior art. The borders, of course, which are a unique and lovely touch. But the way he varies his art a bit for each of the different scenarios. The Ambrose stuff, for instance, reminds me (but not in a derivative way) of Keith Giffen when he is at his most Kirby-esque. The other pages don't remind me of that at all.

I like that in an artist.

At any rate, I continue to really love this series, am already looking forward to the next issue, and am hoping that it does so well and that Bill Willingham enjoys writing is so much that the series is extended for another year. Or two. Or ten.