Fables, the comic about fairy-tale characters ("Fables") living in exile in Manhattan and upstate New York, started with a jaunty mystery (Legends in Exile, 2003) full of irony, but it has steadily darkened. Some major figures--Bluebeard, for instance--have been killed, and in March of the Wooden Soldiers (2004), the Manhattan enclave was attacked by forces of the Adversary, which drove them from their home world. The title story here depicts the year after the attack. Summer sees the birth of Deputy Mayor Snow White's sextuplets (the father is Sheriff Bigby Wolf); fall, Prince Charming's election as mayor; winter, bad decisions by the new administration; and spring, plans to counterattack the Adversary. Two shorter pieces show Bigby Wolf on a secret mission during World War II and Cinderella entrapping a Fable who is collaborating with the Adversary. Tony Akins draws the shorter stories with less detail than Mark Buckingham does the big one; both uphold Fables' snappy good looks.
