Graphic Novel Roundup: A Farewell to Fables, a Trip with the Predator, and a Return to Earth 2

Fables Vol. 22: Farewell, by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham
It’s hard to believe that Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham’s long-running series is coming to an end. Over thirteen years, the main book (and various spin-offs) has been a bedrock of DC’s modern Vertigo line, maintaining consistent quality and and ability to surprise. After the previous volume ripped the Fables apart, this last book, a graphic-novel length issue #150, wraps it all up. If you haven’t been following along, this obviously isn’t the place to start; the uninitiated should check out Legends in Exile, which started the whole thing. The premise of fairy tales living in our mundane modern world would have lost steam long ago were it not for a large, rotating ensemble of characters we care about, a number of truly epic set-pieces, and Willingham’s vicious sense of humor. It’s the end of an era for a series that will be remembered as one of the greats.

CMYK, by Fabio Moon, Jock, Shaun Simon, and Tony Akins
Also from Vertigo this week: DC’s mature reader line has a unique niche in comics—adult sensibilities with the names and production values that only one of the big-name publishers can consistently provide. This new collection of short stories is a perfect case in point: bits of horror and sci-fi from a few dozen talented writers, artists, colorists, and letterers . There are four loose themes related to the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black spectrum on which comic coloring is based, but it’s really just an excuse to let these creators cut loose.

Predator: Fire and Stone, by Joshua Williamson and Joshua Mooneyham
The Predators are taking center stage in this latest chapter in the Fire and Stone crossover. Dark Horse’s reboot of its Aliens line has included four separate miniseries, each more-or-less standalone, but with an overarching storyline. If read as a series, this book marks the concluding chapter, with rogue security chief Galgo Helder leading a group of survivors home aboard a small patrol ship. As fans of Aliens and/or Predator stories have come to expect, everything goes absolutely fine and there are no stowaways on board whatsoever. Nope. We’re all good here. *stab* *gurgle*

Arkham Manor, by Gerry Duggan and Shawn Crystal
Bruce Wayne has lost most of his fortune, and, as a result, stately Wayne manor has lost a bit of its luster. A lot, actually. Pop culture’s most famous mansion (runner up: Downton Abbey?) has been converted into the newest home for Gotham’s ever-expanding assortment of criminally insane miscreants. That’s the clever premise behind this short-lived book—a victim of the DC universe’s newer status quo following the big summer Convergence event. This volume includes the entire series, in which a down-on-his-luck Bruce Wayne investigates a string of murders.

America Vs. The Justice Society, by Roy Thomas, Jerry Ordway, and Howard Bender
Back in the day, DC’s Earth 2 was composed of the Golden Age versions of the heroes who had aged in something like real time. In the mid-80s, the powers that be wiped all that out (for the first time) in the mother of all mega-crossovers, Crisis on Infinite Earths. This book collects one a classic stories from that era that sought to put a punctuation mark on one of the soon-to-be-defunct timelines (see also: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow). As this story opens, Bruce Wayne has been murdered and his diary has only just been discovered. It appears to contain startling revelations about the original super-team, the Justice Society, implicating them in treason and a subsequent cover-up during WWII. There’s more to the story, of course, as the teammates revisit old adventures (including a trial before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the ’50s) while trying to clear their names.

The Comics of Joe Sacco: Journalism in a Visual World, by Daniel Worden and Kevin C. Dunn
Finally, a prose work discussing Joe Sacco, a unique voice in modern comics. His award-winning works like Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza, and The Fixer are based on actual experiences in war zones, and straddle the line between traditional journalistic writing and graphic storytelling, with some autobiography thrown in.
What’s on your pull list?