Jack of Fables Vol. 5: Turning Pages

Jack of Fables Vol. 5: Turning Pages by Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges and Russ Braun consists of issues 22-27 of Jack of Fables.

This volume consists of two three isssue stories. Surprisingly, after leaving us with a big cliffhanger on the end of the Americana storyline and then telling us a single issue story that didn't have any relevance to the cliffhanger situation, we start the book with another irrelevant story. Not the best timing to have this story. However, the story, about Jack's misadventures in the wild West in 1883 is quite good. In the story, Fabletown becomes worried that Jack's exploits are too public and incredible, creating a possible problem for the Fables that want magic to be secret. Fabletown hence sends Bigby (the big bad wolf) to track Jack down. Bigby is one of my favorite characters from Fables, so it was a fun little story. The story did not seem like a Jack of Fables because it didn't have as much humor (although it did have a joke in an extra page at the end of each issue). It felt more like a Fables story than a Jack of Fables story.

The second story finally addresses the cliffhanger at hand at the end of the Americana story. However, it does so in a kind of roundabout way, moving the story slowly and building it up for the next volume. Despite the slowness, I enjoyed it, because we finally get to know more about the Page sisters. Characters that are supposed to be important, but of which we know very little. In this story, "Turning Pages", we get to see a bit of the past of the characters, changing Priscilla quite a bit in my mind, showing the nice side of Robin and showing why Hillary wanted to meet her father so much. Overall it was well done, however I wish we had these issues before the 1883 story. I guess it happened this way to sync up the Fables Crossover later on.

A good volume, but so far the worst of the five. It seems like the sixth one will be a fun one though. I am looking forward to it.