Comic Book Review: Jack of Fables, Vol. 1, The (Nearly) Great Escape

The (Nearly) Great Escape is the first graphic novel in the series Jack of Fables, a spinoff of the popular Fables series (also by Bill Willingham). It collects issues #1-5 of the comic, which explores what happens after the Fables, fearing that Jack's position as a prominent movie producer will expose them, get him fired from his job and sent off into the world alone (see Jack Be Nimble, Fables #34-35). Granted near-immortality thanks to his blockbuster Jack films (for Fables are stronger when their stories are well-known), he takes off hitchhiking with a briefcase full of money. adparams.getadspec('c_billboard1');

Jack of Fables expands the world of the Fables in very interesting ways. First, as we see in The (Nearly) Great Escape, the Fables are not alone in our world. Jack is kidnapped and taken to Golden Boughs Retirement Village, headed by Revise and his librarians, where Fables are kept and neutered. It's also explained why the Fables there aren't just killed: as with the Three Little Pigs in Fables: Animal Farm, dead Fables are often replaced by new ones filling the same role.

Aside from the usual twists, Jack of Fables loses something from the original series. Jack is too generic of a character - a deadbeat and chronic womanizer who somehow just happens to be every fairy tale character named "Jack" - to be particularly interesting or likeable, and his narration can get a bit obnoxious. There's violence, sex, and death, of course, but the tone feels less dark than the original. In addition, the focus on Jack instead of an ensemble cast, at least in the first volume, is a big drawback, first because he's slightly annoying but second because it limits the focus of the possible stories.

The other annoying part of The (Nearly) Great Escape is the return of Goldilocks. The contrast between the character in Fables and the innocent young girl of the Three Little Bears story was unusual at first, but the concept has been well-used in Fables, and in Jack of Fables she becomes more explicitly a sort of twisted liberal feminist strawman with no other substance to her character.

Revise and the other villains, however, are an intriguing concept which I'm eager to see explored further. Since it's been established that Fables become stronger and more immortal when their stories are more widely known, it only follows logically that they would become weaker if their stories were censored or forgotten.The introduction of American Fables such as Paul Bunyan also provides a promising direction for the series.