Couldn't put this one down. It reminded my why I really enjoyed the fables series. The re-casting of familiar faces and aspects of fables and legends is great.

Besides, Babe the Blue Ox makes up for many shortcomings. That and the wonderful spoofiness of the much beloved "Midsummer Night Dream" of the Sandman series.

Wonderful. ( )

http://www.piruett.se/2009/04/11/en-r... ( )

It's rare that a spin-off series has any real connection to the original besides a character or two and a branding. Now, Jack of Fables is a whole different animal. Thanks to the nature of monthly comics, both this title and the original Fables are released in tandem. While you need not read both to get the follow the stories, each reveals important aspects of the Fable universe. In this case, Jack has been providing readers with incredible insight into the nature of the Fable world which we have been following for years. Any Fables fan who wants to better understand where it all came from should check out this series.
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As for this volume, I have to say that is is quite a ride. The whole series is a little unusual for its aggressively tongue-in-cheek style and incredibly weak 4th wall. At times, things can move a bit too fast for comfort, but the story is slick, the dialog witty, the design inventive and the art consistently fantastic. A newcomer to Jack of Fables will probably want to start with the first volume, of course, and it may take a little while to get in to (I know that I, personally, wasn't too fond of the series until about half way through the second story arc, and I'm glad for my patience.) However, it is a fantastic expansion of the Fables story and a strong title on its own, which comes with this reviewer's full recommendation. ( )

Summary: Jack of the Tales, his sidekick Gary (erstwhile known as the Pathetic Fallacy), and a newly-reassembled Humpty Dumpty head off to Americana, the homeland of the American Fables, in search of a lost treasure. On their way, they run into Hillary Page, who has broken Paul Bunyan out of Golden Boughs for her own purposes. All is not well in Americana, however - the Bookburner has taken over, and his hordes of zombie policeman are intent on capturing the visiting Fables... and Literals. Also included is a one-off issue starring Wicked John that focuses on Golden Boughs' one attempt to put on a stage show - Hamlet - before everything went disastrously wrong.

Review: Americana is another fun addition to the Jack of Fables library. I've pretty much accepted that clues about what's really going on, and bits of the overarching plot are going to be doled out to the readers much more slowly than in the main Fables series, but we do get some more hints about who the Literals are and what they want as things move forward. My main problem with this volume was that it felt like a lot of wasted potential. Jack and company's adventures in each region of Americana (Antebellum, Gangland, The Big City, the Frontier, Idyll, etc.) passes by in two or three pages, when there is enough material that each of them could easily have filled an entire issue. Also missing was any mention of what's going on in the main Fables volumes at this point in the storyline - not even a word about why the Adversary hasn't invaded Americana (presuming that's true). Still, I enjoyed seeing a previously underrepresented branch of characters turn up in the Fables universe, and Jack's narration is as funny as ever - although once again, the delusional Babe the Blue Ox stole the show. ("The abyss, as it turns out, just HATES having its pupils dilated.") 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Hopefully this is just an introduction, and not the last we'll see of these characters and introductions - but I'm going to keep reading to find out, of course. ( )

So, after the promise of the last volume of Jack, I thought this would be full of the war. Nope, just Jack running around various pockets of American mythology and urban legend, trying to stay ahead of Revise. Babe the Blue Ox, however, was quite hysterical.

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