Fables: The Mean Seasons

Bill Willingham

I've been reading Fables and Brian Michael Bendis' Powers simultaneously, and hadn't really been able to come to much of a conclusion about whether I preferred one or the other. The Mean Seasons, however, sealed the deal for me: Fables is the better-written series. I mean, Willingham takes a book where, basically, nothing happens and still makes it into something that demands to be devoured in one sitting.

The Mean Seasons takes the fables through the year following the end of March of the Wooden Soldiers. Its main purpose is to wrap up loose ends from older books (such as the Fabletown election and Snow's pregnancy) and introduce hooks for later books in the series. The only real story arc here is a two-parter in which Bigby and a friend from his wartime days spin some tales of Bigby's prowess in battle. Everything else is transitional. Content-wise, when it comes right down to it, the book's as vapid as Paris Hilton.

And yet, like the rest of the series' titles, it's gripping. Willingham makes the day-to-day life of Fabletown and the farm as exciting as Blue's retelling of the fall of the last outpost in the Homelands that kicked off March of the Wooden Soldiers. That takes some doing.

The series just keeps getting better. Can't wait for book six.