Shop For Fables Vol. 13: The Great Fables Crossover

The Great Fables Crossover spans three titles- Fables, Jack of Fables, and The Literals (a mini series released to complete the crossover)- so it is indeed a Crossover. It does star Fables (perennial favorites Bigby and Snow are more at the forefront here than they have been recently). But I'd hesitate to call it Great.

To summarize where we are at the start of this (minor spoilers to follow)- the characters of both ongoing books have been ousted from their homes- Jack and co. from Golden Boughs, destroyed in the battle with Bookburner, and the Fables are up at the Farm following the collapse of the Woodland building by Mr. Dark's evil magics. Kevin Thorne, a longtime background character in the Fables book, was revealed to be one of the Literals- embodiments of literary devises- and an important one at that, the embodiment of storytelling itself. He's decided his creations- the Fables/the universe?- has gotten out of control and he's going to end it all and start over. The crossover begins with Jack calling the Fables for help, and they dispatch Snow and Bigby to head out west and investigate Jack's claims. When they arrive Jack leaves in a huff and heads to the Farm (and the main Fables book), leaving Snow and Bigby (and the Jack of Fables supporting cast) to deal with the Literals.

This swapping is probably my favorite element of the crossover. Snow and Bigby are out of their element in Jack's book, and Jack's been apart from the main Fables for so long that there are a lot of interesting character beats to be found.

I'm not a big fan of the Literals themselves- I've never really loved the idea, and this storyline has been building in Jack of Fables for a really long time (and, in my mind, knocking a lot of the fun out of that book , somewhere around the Americana story, as the Literals came more and more to the forefront of the action). The biggest problem with this crossover is that it's really a Jack of Fables story and not a Fables story at all. It's fun to watch Jack wreck a bit of mayhem at the farm, but there's very little advancement to any of the Fables plot lines or characters- the exceptions being some more development of Stinky the Badger and his obsession with Blue's return and a bit more seeding of Grimble being a more important member of Fabletown- that's it. Everything else remains pretty status quo from the end of the last volume. Conversely, the Jack of Fables book is in a completely different place (one I'm more excited to read about than I have in some time).

A word on the art- all very strong. Mark Buckingham draws four of the nine chapters, and Jack of Fables artists Tony Akins and Russ Braun split the rest. Mark Buckingham remains a genius and the other artists' styles aren't too divergent to be distracting.

All in all, this is a pretty good volume of Jack of Fables and a sub-par volume of Fables. If you've been following Jack of Fables, you'll want to pick this up. If you're a Fables fan who dislikes the Jack book, you may want to consider skipping this.
The 3.5 out of 5 stars it has now is an accurate assessment.Get more detail about Fables Vol. 13: The Great Fables Crossover.