Volume four of Bill Willingham’s Fables, March of the Wooden Soldiers, ramps up the action with an invasion of our world by the Adversary’s forces. I thought it was a strong, tight volume with an exciting story and some good development of secondary characters, including Boy Blue and Pinocchio. To my surprise, I continue to be amused by Prince Charming; and I liked the riffing off the Matrix‘s Agents through the wooden soldiers of the title.
I will note that I was spoiled regarding the Adversary’s identity. (Wikipedia link immediately redirects to that identity. I should’ve known better, but I really I thought I’d get an intermediate page that would have spoiler warnings. I’ve left a note proposing that.) Despite the clues in this volume, I have a healthy amount of skepticism that the eventual revelation will work.
(When it happens, I’d like to see the revelation bring some of the complexity to the political that is present in the personal. Right now it’s very black and white, which is an odd contrast to the reimaginings of the Fables.)
This volume includes an introductory one-shot, penciled by P. Craig Russell and Craig Hamilton, about the last stand in the Homelands. Hamilton’s art is not to my taste, as it has bulging anatomy and oddly garish faces. The main story’s art is by Mark Buckingham (pencils, some inking) and Steve Leialoha (some inking), and continues to have a lot of features I like, including carefully-designed page borders and numbers.