As entertaining as the previous Fables volumes have been, with their magic-mirrored reflections on politics and relationships and rivalries and so forth, there was something missing that I hadn’t really even placed as gone until Bill Willingham set it down in front of me. See, all the many and varied familiar characters in Fabletown only came there for one reason: a powerful Adversary conquered and enslaved their homes, one by one, and they fled to the one place he never showed any interest in, our mundane world.

Except, as you’ve already guessed, all that is about to change. March of the Wooden Soldiers chronicles the first escapee from the Aversary’s grasp in over two hundred years, and the brutal aftermath of that event, including (but not limited to) open warfare in the streets of New York City! Not only has this opened up rich new avenues of future storytelling, but it provided the surprising (to me, anyway) info that nobody really knows who the Adversary is; I had been imagining a Voldemort kind of situation, rather. And in the meantime, several outstanding storylines have proceeded forward in highly satisfying ways. I am pleased to have a new favorite ongoing series, what with the end of Y: The Last Man a few months ago. Hooray for good stuff!

Not that this matters to anyone but me, but I think I went off-schedule again reading this book when I did. Weird. Anyway, the new X-Men was largely dandy, continuing the streak of finally being actively good. The only thing that really stopped it from being actively great was how the Spider-Man crossover demonstrated the author’s active preference for a non X-Men character. Which, okay, I can understand it, but it doesn’t really match what I was supposed to be reading.

Character favoritism aside, Blockbuster had a great Wolverine-themed story that revealed a little more of Logan’s history to the subject and readers alike. Remnants of Weapon X are gunning for the project’s greatest success, and Wolverine’s questionable ethical decisions over the past few volumes have separated him from the safety of Charles Xavier’s Xtra powerful team of mutant teens. The theme that permeates every event and every interaction is that of consequences. It’s not a happy book, as you can imagine from that claim, but it is a damn fine one. I am really glad to see the series finally reaching for its potential. Hooray for faith paying off!

Oh, good news, I remembered that I’m not out of order after all. Plus, that crossover bit in the first half of the book re-mentioned an Ultimate universe event I saw a hint of in one of the early Ultimates comics, and now I finally know where it came from. I’ll be reading the books that tell that story relatively soon, too, so that will be nice to finally have back in order!