Review by Frank Plowright

In Americana Hillary Page awakened the old threat of Bookburner, an ancient Literal whose objective is to eradicate all Fables, but before then he has a score to settle with Revise. Turning Pages presented the prelude with Bookburner and his army turning up at Golden Boughs, and it all kicks off to begin The Big Book of War. Regular readers may feel a major mistake is made in appointing Jack as the one to lead the fightback.

This is an uneven story because co-writers Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges can’t come to a decision on where their priorities lie. The big battle was always going to be a background to the revelations, and with so many characters to consider it sprawls very quickly, yet there also needs to be a viable threat established because the eventual outcome would otherwise lack surprise or emotional punch. It also serves to reduce Jack to a succession of blustering comedic interludes. The existential threat is the possibility of all Fables being wiped out, and preventing that happening is largely down to an idiot.

However, The Big Book of War is where the assorted Literals introduced to date come to have greater relevance. Exactly what Revise has been doing over the centuries is revealed, enabling the writers to drop a few funny references to the ‘true’ versions of old stories, but the biggest bombshell drops at the end. At a stroke it changes perceptions of what Jack is, and it’s very clever.

Russ Braun draws a few pages, but The Big Book of War is the longest run Tony Akins has illustrated for a while. His page layouts don’t have the imagination of Braun’s, but there’s effort in drawing dozens of characters, often on the same page, and his smarmy Jack is presented with some verve.

Unlike other Jack of Fables volumes, the reason the story needed to run on so long is apparent, and it is a game-changer in a couple of respects, but despite the clever disclosures it drags in places. Before The New Adventures of Jack and Jack, there’s the matter of The Great Fables Crossover to consider…