So, what have we got in Fables so far? The first two volumes were introductory, familiarizing us with the secret community of the immortal fables living in modern-day Manhattan (well, some of the fables live in an enchanted farm upstate New York).
Will the third volume get the story going full speed already? I was really hoping that it would, now that our contemporary fairytale had been placed on tracks so nicely in previous volumes. Despite my hopes, I had to be patient still. The third volume turned out to be a transitional volume, patched up from four different stories, tying up loose ends and providing more character background.
The first story, "Bag O'bones," is actually the retelling of the famous folklore tale known as "Soldier Jack". It just so happens that our unredeemable trickster — Jack of all possible tales — had arrived to the new world just early enough to participate in the American Civil War, Confederacy side. Equipped with excessive faux old-south accent, Jack hopes to scheme himself into marrying a southern belle. He ends up catching death in a sack, though.
"Bag O'bones" is illustrated by guest artist Bryan Talbot, with thick shaky inking as if to convey the screechy-rattling-bones theme of this tale. The regular and pleasant style of Fables is occasionally shaken up like so by guest artists — no complaints there — but I gladly reverted back to the harmonious native style for the rest of the volume.
"A Sharp Operation" Is a somewhat darker little story, spanning two chapters and taking place sometime during Manhattan’s snowy winter nights. A Pulitzer-hungry mundy-journalist ("mundy" as in a non-fable regular person) threatens to uncover the fables community as the immortal vampires he thinks they are. The men of Fabletown devise a plan to take care of this imminent and undesirable publicity, by exploiting Briar Rose’s — she’s also known as the Sleeping Beauty — ability to make a whole building fall asleep. Plan A proves to be too mild for silencing a journalist in the information age. Plan B proves to be dirtier (and smellier) with one black hearted fable who ends up doing something really bad.
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