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Online Store - Fables, Vol. 11: War and Pieces
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List Price: $17.99
Our Price: $12.23
Your Save: $ 5.76 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vertigo
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 741
EAN: 9781401219130
ISBN: 1401219136
Label: Vertigo
Manufacturer: Vertigo
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: 2008-11-25
Publisher: Vertigo
Release Date: 2008-11-25
Studio: Vertigo
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A glorious ending to the FABLES main arc
Comment: Before commencing with my review, I have to note that FABLES could well become the next TRUE BLOOD. The latter is the highly successful HBO television series, which adapted the wonderful Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris for the small screen. About a month before I write this ABC put a new television series based on FABLES into production. The people in charge of the production and pilot are the people behind the interesting but unsuccessful series SIX DEGREES. Hopefully the pilot will thrill and enchant the top brass at ABC and FABLES will become a primetime series on ABC. I have to confess that at the moment I have a hatred for ABC that is deep and strong, due to their almost unforgivable cancellation of PUSHING DAISIES, but a TV series based on FABLES would go a long way towards making me forgive them.
WAR AND PIECES pretty much brings us to the point that we always knew that FABLES would reach, the war between the Fables and the Adversary. From the very first issue any perceptive reader knew that this moment would come. What is somewhat surprising is that the series will not cease with the resolution of the war. But just as some friends of mine refuse to watch individual episodes of either LOST or 24, preferring instead to watch them in one big chunk on DVD, so I refrain from getting the individual issues of FABLES, instead buying each collected volume. So I won't know what happens next until next August when the 12th volume in the series is published. Meanwhile, Willingham's FABLES has become quite the franchise. Not only is there the possible new ABC series, there are a couple of spin offs in the offing, including a Peter Piper series and a miniseries involving that wonderful superspy Cinderella. The fifth volume of JACK OF FABLES has had its publication date announced, even before the fourth volume has been published. So, even if the main FABLES comic were not to continue (though it is), it seems certain that it will be a long, long time before we are without new comics based upon the FABLES universe.
This was just a glorious set of stories. There is always the danger when anticipating the end to a major story arc that it will be disappointing. These were just a delightful series of issues. We'd had a brief taste earlier of Cinderella as a super spy and it was delightful to have her reprise that guise. On a mission to retrieve an all-important package at the southern tip of South America we get to see her in all her unexpected glory. Some of the things we see various Fables do are wonderfully congruous with what we already knew about them, but the whole idea of Cinderella as a Jane Bond character is so out of whack with everything else we know about her to be delightful, not unlike Goldilocks as a murderous and slutty rogue. Then the actual war is wonderfully inventive. Using magic carpets as ballast to keep a wooden ship airborne seems very much like something the Fables would do. And the heroic demise of the unceasingly selfish Prince Charming is delightfully out of character. As with all the previous FABLES books, this one is filled with endless surprises and unanticipated twists. It is all so very good that even though it would have been a natural place to bring the entire series to a close, I'm quite delighted that Willingham decided not to.
Except for SANDMAN, this has to be my all time favorite comic series. It is exceptional for getting better and better as it has gone along. Early on I felt that some of the volumes were somewhat hampered for attempting to emulate one or another genre (for instance, the first volume was a whodunit, and all the weaker for that). But it really has ceased imitating other genres and found its own voice. I hope that we are a long, long way from the end. Hopefully by the time that Vol. 12 is published in August 2009, we will have heard that ABC has pulled the trigger on a FABLES TV series.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fables of War
Comment: This is one of the best Fables Volumes in my opinion. It meets the expectations the series has built up in it's readers page for page. Many lose ends are tied up and some stories even end completely. Other stores are sparked and introduced. It is a perfect climax and introduction all in one. I cursed after reading it because now i have to wait until August for my next dose of Fables! haha!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A somewhat satisfying ending
Comment: This was the end of a major story arc for Fables - the war with the adversary - and, as such, I expected it to be somehow bigger. The first two issues lead up to the war with only three issues dedicated to the war itself. This is the big climactic event of the series so far and I wouldn't have minded seeing a few more issues dedicated to the conflict. Also, as I've long suspected, the Fables win quite easily, since they are armed with modern-day firepower as well as magic. This creates a lack of suspense throughout the book.
Having said this, I have trouble faulting "War and Pieces." It would be difficult to write a fully satisfying close to this storyline. And several loose ends were tied up in a way that made perfect sense. A few loose ends were left, too, which makes me excited about what Willingham has in store for the future of Fables. And, as always, the art is beautiful.
Still, on the heels of Fables Vol. 10: The Good Prince, which was easily one of the best graphic novels I've read, this story felt somehow lacking.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I Was Disappointed
Comment: So far the other reviews all seem satisfied with this new volume so don't let my review put you off from taking a look. Especially if you're one of the few people who's gone through the first ten-plus volumes because your going to want to go ahead and graduate with this one.
Ever since the very first volume when all of the fables made a toast to winning back the homelands the series has been leading up to what is the last three issues collected in this paperback. Willingham says this himself in his afterword and calls the 'War and Pieces' arc a milestone in the series so far. We've been waitng 72 issues for this and here it is, the climax, summed up in three slim issues. I wanted so much more than this and I don't understand how the script came out the way that it did. All of the pieces for a great story are here, it is the execution that leaves it flat. It's filled with excellent and entertaining ideas but it moves so f***ing fast that it feels like more of an outline rather than an actual story. Literally half of the action is gotten out of the way by word baloons. Characters aren't so much characters anymore but vehicles for plot points; they speak in plot points. Subplots from previous arcs that took themselves several issues to be set up are solved here in a single panal. I don't understand how after so much careful planning and time went into previous arcs it would all just be slapped together in the end. I would have been willing to pay twice as much money to have seen this arc spread out over seven or eight issues, maybe more. (Good Prince was 9, and Wooden-soldiers was 8)
I suppose that by now Willingham knows that he has a sure audience and that all they really want is those damn plot points. I feel like I deserve more than just flashes of sensationalism that the writer thinks I want, rather than something I can really immerse myself in, as I could in the first six or so paperbacks. It's a shame how little this feels like an epic.
After 'War and Pieces' things really are going to change. The series is going to have to take an entirely fresh, deep breath, which I hope will force Willinham to go back to basics and telling his story without anything to lean on, as he had to do in the beginning. I'll no doubt be buying the next collection so good luck to him.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The One in Which the War Concludes: And Boy, Is This A Grand Climax!
Comment: Others have posted in detail about the basis for the series and the segments of this volume, so I'm gonna skip the spoilers.
I will say this: It's all been leading up to this big, final series of espionage adventures and world-spanning battles. We see how the war is won...and by whom. It's satisfying and it's exciting and it's sad, too.
This is my fave ongoing comic book series, bar none. It's been hard waiting for the bound paperbacks (rather than reading one issue at a time), but it's always worth it. This series is well-written, well-drawn, and always full of twisty, folklorish-retelling fun.
Boy blue shines here (although he's not having an easy time of it in more ways than one), as does Prince Charming (whether you've loved or hated his complex, conceited, but courageous self). Cinderella, er, I mean "Cindy," is kickbutt great as she does her wicked-good spy thing! The battle strategies are fun to follow. And the showdown between the Big Bad Emperor and one of my fave Fable characters ends with a lovely humorous twist. :)
If you're not familiar with the series--start with #1. Really. This storyline is not going to satisfy properly unless you follow the story from chapter one. It's a great ride, and you want to start from "Go!"
Now that the arc of the war series is done, I am crazy curious to see where the saga goes next. (And I keep hoping to hear more about Frau Totenkinder and her mysterious witchy ways, as well as more about all of the thirteenth floor's sorcerous inhabitants.)
This series deserves every award it's gotten. Thumbs way up!
Mir
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