This third installment picks up right where JACK OF HEARTS left off. Jack and Gary are nearing the Grand Canyon when the folks from the Golden Boughs Retirement Community catch up with them yet again. Things literally go downhill from there as their van plunges off the side of a cliff and ends up at the bottom of the Grand Canyon - where Jack is in for the surprise of his life.

I really enjoyed this. It was a fun, entertaining read, full of the sort of humor I've come to expect from this most irreverent of Fables. I continue to get a big kick out of the series's self-awareness. Jack addresses the reader directly in his end blurbs, (most of which are rude, arrogant, and utterly hilarious), and this time around we get some similar stuff from Gary, who makes it clear that he knows he's a character in a comic book. This makes for some funny reading, but it's not just about the gags. These segments add to a new subplot involving a group called the Literals, who may or may not be responsible for the creation of the Homelands and their former inhabitants.

Along the way, we also learn a fair bit more about Jack's origins, which aren't quite what you'd expect. Once again, Willingham and Sturges provide readers with a nice blend of classic storytelling and snarky humor, with plenty of twists.

And of course, there are also some decidedly weird bits. Jack's brush with Excalibur is pretty out-there, but it works within this strange, strange universe. Babe the Blue Ox's daydreams had me in stitches; they're so random, and yet they, too, fit perfectly.

I was a little iffy on the first two JACK OF FABLES collections, but I'm sure I'll continue to the read the series from hereon in.

(A slightly different version of this review originally appeared on my blog, Stella Matutina). ( )

Summary: Jack, on his way out of Las Vegas, gets re-captured by one of the Page sisters, but their van crashes into the Grand Canyon before they can get far. Before they can get rescued, however, Jack has a bit to learn about himself, the obnoxiously cocky Wicked John (who strangely looks just like Jack), the mysterious sword sticking out of his chest, and the nature of his sidekick Gary. There's also a standalone Halloween tale, "Jack-o-Lantern", in which Jack tells us about his dealing with various devils.

Review: Compared to the first two volumes in the Jack series, it felt like not a whole lot actually happened in this volume. On the other hand, we do learn quite a bit about who Mr. Revise and the rest of the Literals are, what the folks at the Golden Boughs are really up to, and about Jack's earliest history. There's also hints that all is not well amongst the Page sisters, and promises of interesting developments to come. So, while it was a little slower than you might otherwise expect from Jack (although still packed with just as much snarky egoism as ever), it's definitely packed with interesting story points. My favorite bits, however, were the one-page interludes starring Babe, Paul Bunyan's seriously delusional blue ox. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Like the main Fables series, there is a deeper story going on underneath the tales of Jack's exploits, and we finally start to get some serious clues about what's going on. ( )

As far as the 'Jack' series, goes, this third story line is one of the slower ones. Indeed, it is a bit slow even for its parent title, 'Fables', running tangent as it does to 'The Good Prince' in the main continuity. The majority of the five issues take place in the same canyon. Despite this, it still holds the same wit and humor of the title. On top of that, 'The Bad Prince' gives more insight into the nature of the Fables universe than any other storyline thus far. I won't spoil anything, but we finally given some hints as to the nature of some of the movers and shakers in the recent tales. Of course, this also opens up countless questions that will, hopefully, be answered in just as fun and enjoyable a manner.

The Fables universe is one of the more interesting ones on the shelves today, and in the last year or so its many secrets are being blown wide open. Though this trend is incredibly gratifying, let us just hope that it doesn't also signal the start of the last act in the saga of Fabletown. ( )

Given the parallelism in titles, I did want more parallelism in stories between this and The Good Prince, which came out around the same time this omnibus did. But, this does tie Jack back into Fables. Something minor that happened in the birthday party issue (in The Good Prince) has major consequences for Jack.

Even better, remember a really long time ago (Volume 5 of Fables, The Mean Seasons) when there was that guy who remembered the invasion of the wooden soldiers? (Not the reporter that thought they were vampires, the other Mundy who seems to have a clue) Well, he's back, with back story.

Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out the significance of the tie-in (I don't want to spoil it--sorry for being cryptic). I still haven't figured out how I feel about the Jack spin-off yet. It's not as strong as Fables, but I think it has hope, but I'm afraid that might just be wishful thinking.

See all my reviews at www.tushuguan.blogspot.com ( )

Unfortunately, though, this spin off from the popular Fables comics series isn't my cup of tea. I couldn't even tell you why I read all five volumes, except that I have a weird completist gene in me somewhere that doesn't let me not finish books. The "Jack" of these books is the Jack you read about in "Jack the Giant Killer" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" -- the "Jack" of any fairy tale or fable is apparently all one and the same. In the first volume, Jack is thrown out of Fabletown and promptly falls into the hands of Mr. Revise, a very bad man who is trying to rid the world of all notions of fairy tales and fables. In the second volume, he has an unfortunate encounter with Lady Luck -- a literal Lady Luck -- in Las Vegas. The third book finds him in the Grand Canyon with a sword through his chest that somehow doesn't kill him; I guess you can't kill a fable. Americana, a sort of fairy tale America, is the setting of the fourth book, where we meet Mr. Book Burner, who is apparently somehow a rival to revise, who, we learn, is somehow related to the Pathetic Fallacy, who we know as Gary. Yes, things are getting pretty complicated. The fifth book has us in Western Americana, and tells us more about the Page sisters, who are Revise's henchwomen. All of it gives me a great big feeling of "Eh!" Maybe I just don't like Jack, a classic anti-hero who treats women like dirt and cares about nothing but money. Or maybe the weavings of the plot, which appear to be trying to say something about literature -- something that would normally fascinate me -- just fall flat here. In any event, this is one series I won't be following any further.