Deamentia
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by Bill Willingham & Matthew Sturges (writers), Mark Buckingham (pencils), Andrew Pepoy (inks), Lee Loughridge (colors), and Todd Klein (letters)
The Story: The Great Fables Crossover comes to its conclusion as our heroes finally confront Kevin Thorn.
What’s Good: Well, this issue feels a bit less slapped together than last week’s; the characters sound like themselves once again. Also, we finally get Gary actually making himself useful, which is refreshing.
Also, I’ll admit that for better or for worse, I always snicker a bit whenever Willingham and Sturges get metatextual and have their Literal characters break the fourth wall. Revise’s comments on the comic were great, as was Deus Ex Machina’s tongue-in-cheek remarks about himself. I also liked how Kevin Thorn’s powers were depicted, affecting the actual comic. It was also nice seeing the business office again, if only for a moment.
Unfortunately, the best thing about this comic is that it marks the conclusion of this underwhelming crossover. It was great seeing things go back to normal: the reunion of Jack and Gary was oddly touching, while the Page Sisters join up with Frost and head out, guaranteed to cause mayhem in future issues of Jack. It’s just a giant breath of relief as we are reassured that all of this nonsense is over and that we’ll hopefully once again be getting the comics we know and love. At least Buckingham’s art has been consistently outstanding.
What’s Not-So-Good: This issue clearly demonstrates why shaping an entire story arc around the Literals wasn’t the best of ideas. The Literals are all, not just Dex, walking cases of deus ex machina. Now, that’s all right for a quick gag here and there or a fun side character, but when an entire story rests upon them? It leads to problems and a truly anticlimactic ending.
Indeed, words cannot describe just how anticlimactic the ending is to this crossover. After all of the build-up, there is more or less no real “battle” with Thorn. Worse still, the ending comes courtesy of Dex. Yes, Dex is funny, but unfortunately using him nonetheless means that Willingham closed off his series with a ludicrous deus ex machina moment, which is unforgivably lazy. Just because you wittily acknowledge using deus ex machina doesn’t mean that you aren’t using it.
Can’t figure out what to do with Thorn? Dex shows up with a random artifact that solves everything. Can’t figure out how to use it? Don’t worry, Revise just “edits out” the part of the comic where our heroes work it out, making the artifact work instantaneously. I don’t care if Revise edited parts of our real world comic out, nor do I care how admittedly witty that is, the fact remains that Willingham just took a shortcut that allowed him to avoid explanations.
More anticlimactic still is that the crossover ends with seemingly the removal of all the Literals from the series, which creates an even stronger sense of pointlessness to this crossover. Jack and Gary are back together, the Literals are gone, and Bigby and Snow go home. What in the hell was the point of this crossover?! I’ve been plagued by this question for the last three months and this issue gives me my answer:
Nothing.
Conclusion: This pointless, drawn out crossover is finished. Thank God.
Grade: C-
-Alex Evans
Filed under: DC Comics, Reviews, Vertigo | Tagged: Alex Evans, Bigby Wolf, Comic Book Reviews, DC Comics, Fables, Great Fables Crossover, Jack Frost, Jack of Fables, Kevin Thorn, Literals, Mr. Revise, Pathetic Fallacy, The Literals #3, Vertigo, Weekly Comic Book Review
First things first: I stumbled upon your website a month or so ago, and I really enjoy your reviews. Please keep up the great work!
Second things second: If you’re looking for a point to the crossover, I think it was to remove the Literals from the story altogether and to do so in a way that made sense within the context of the larger story. The “Big Two” publishers have a very convenient way to get rid of major characters from past storylines: they simply ignore them. On one hand, that’s incredibly convenient, but on the other hand it’s extremely annoying.
I know it’s unwise — and possibly even rude — to speculate about an author’s intentions, but my gut feeling is that Willingham & Co. came to the conclusion at some point that the Literals were untenable as long term characters and tried to find the best way possible of creating a way for them to exit the stage permanently. And rather than take the who-gives-a-crap-about-past-continuity attitude of the Big Two, they actually addressed the abandonment of some majorly important characters within the story itself.
The crossover wasn’t my favorite Fables story, either. Far from it, in fact. But it had its moments, and I think what it achieved clears the way for getting back to telling stories that are a bit more grounded, and for leaving behind all the metatextual stuff. Maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part, but that’s what I’m hoping for anyway.
Charles
Hey Charles, thanks for the comment.
I do agree with you to an extent and I also wouldn’t mind a non-Literal centred story, though that obviously has more bearing for the Jack series than Fables. That said, I’m still not certain that it was truly necessary. The Literals were actually fairly enjoyable for the odd metatextual gag, but as this crossover showed, having a story entirely centred on them can be disastrous. Strangely, the arc that was meant to remove them was the very thing that most showed that they had to go.
I guess my chief frustration in my feelings of pointlessness to the crossover comes from how needlessly extended it was. I suppose with this anticlimactic issue, I boiled over a bit after reading/reviewing issues that largely treaded water every week for three months.
I honestly believe this crossover to be the worst that Fables (or Jack for that matter) has ever been, but I do expect the book to bounce back. I also wonder if any of the sloppiness had to do with Willingham’s hammering out the details for Justice Society.
-Alex Evans
I loved this crossover and the ending. Willingham and Sturgis do such a better job at playing with metatextual themes than Morrison did in that slop fest called Final Crisis. If you are going to examine the nature of fiction within a fictional universe, do it with some humor and a wink and a nudge, as was done here, not with pretentiousness and lack of narrative cohesion.
Despite my harsh comments towards this crossover, I do agree with much of what you’ve said, ZOZ. Unlike Morrison, for all my complaints, Willingham did deal with his themes in an accessible fashion.
I’m glad the Literals are gone. … Spoilers ahead….. For me, even the page sisters and the pathetic fallacy should’ve gone, just to get rid of these stupid characters. The only thing their introduction did was to ruin the Fables universe. I liked better before when there was some mystery to their nature and when they couldn’t be retconned.
Even worse is that this whole literals garbage added a bunch of godly characters, which raises big questions about the nature of everything in the comic book, and then they just dumped those characters, as if they had no importance whatsoever. Yeah I said I was glad they were sent away, IMO that was the least harmful ending possible, but I wouldn’t be all that disapointed if Kevin had indeed destroyed the universe and put and end to Fables.
This crossover was a huge let down, full of plot holes, lazy writing, dumb childish situations. Fables used to be one my favorite series that I held with the same regard as classics like Sandman or Preacher, and then they screwed it all up.