Fables #78

Written by Bill Willingham
Art by Mark Buckingham, Andrew Pepoy, & Peter Gross

I was a little worried that this title would lose steam after the completion of the war in #75, and I'm still not convinced that I'm wrong. This is a good issue, and all of the individual scenes play out as well as they always do, but I don't feel the same momentum that this series has had the last few years.

We are introduced to a new antagonist this issue - Mister Dark (are all the old Valiant villains fables now? Oh wait, that was Darque), who was being used as a cell-phone tower for evil in the Adversary's kingdom. He releases a spell to un-do the Witching Cloak (which was a little too much of a deus ex machina at times), and undoes a bit of Blufkin in the process. I'm curious to see where this plot takes us.

We also see a bit more of Mowgli in the Kipling-verse, and the scenes involving Bigby's brothers are enjoyable.

As always, the book is beautiful. The cover is not my favourite though - I hope that the last of the James Jean covers match some of his earlier works in terms of beauty, not fright.