What I Read - Apr 1, 2010

Fables v1 - written by Bill Willingham with art by Lan Medina. A good but not a great read. The opening arc of this series revolves around the investigation into the disappearance and possible murder of Rose Red, Snow White's sister. All the main charcters come from other fiction: Snow White, Bigby Wolf, Blue Beard, Jack, Prince Charming, Little Boy Blue, Old King Cole, etc. Bigby leads the investigation, Snow White is the deputy mayor and city administrator of Fabletown, Old King Cole is the mayor. Its a little unclear where they are located but I'm guessing that it is supposed to be somewhere in New York City.

The art gets the job done but I wouldn't call it solid. The most interesting or appealing part of the story was the characterization of the main characters, and how they seem to embody characteristics from the stories they originally appeared and traits that seem somewhat contradictory to their original nature: rather than being a damsel in distress Snow White runs the town and on occasion curses up a storm, Prince Charming is best known (in this series at least) for sleeping around,etc.

The Moth - written by Gary Martin with art by Steve Rude. Despite high expectations I wasn't too wild about this book after reading the first 10 pages. I think it was the plot and characters. Despite the weird mix it seemed somewhat formulaic in places

I've now finished the first chapter. Although I'm still not wild about it, I've taken off my blinders, opened my eyes and can now see that the book has strengths, namely the artwork and the humor. Hopefully the story and characters will get more interesting.

20th Century Boys v5 - story and art by Naoki Urasawa. Halfway through this volume the story veered in a direction that I didn't see it going, it flashed forward 14 years into the future (to the year 2014) and one of the supporting characters took the lead. There was some indication in v1 that this would or might happen but I was taken in by the rest of the story and assumed that it would end in the year 2000, as I thought was hinted in v1.

Of course, I don't know what comes next. It's possible that the story will return to the late 20th century before its over. I hope it will since there are a number of questions that have yet to get answered. Regardless of where the story goes from here its been a fun ride so far. I hope it continues to be entertaining to the end.