First a warning - this is a violent, gore fest more often then not. Bigby isn't a subtle man to begin with and these folks pissed him off something bad and he let's loose on them. Also there is a lot of nudity running around these pages. Male and female. I wouldn't call it explicit persay--girls are obviously girls, guys are obviously guys, but its pretty clinical overall.

FABLES remains one of my favorite comics and barring something slipshod editor deciding to butcher it, that's not likely to change. I've looked forward to this book for a long time mainly because Bigby is my favorite character, bar none (save Snow White and Cinderella), and it promised to give us a bit of back story on the man behind the wolf. In that it didn't disappoint. Bigby has spoken of his time in WWII, when he helped out the Allies (unofficially) to stop the encroachment of the Nazis, but in this he reveals just what he did exactly.

The art isn't anything to write home about, its not up to the usual standards of the comic and part of that may be because most of the story arcs had one artistic team (inkers, layout, pencils) throughout. WEREWOLVES has numerous inkers and in a comic book that can really fudge up the artwork. From a reader's perspective, it made folk hard to tell apart (I kept mixing up Diana and Oda, or Alwin and Carl for instance, which in turn confused me as all four had separate agendas more or less). The werewolves, whether intentionally or not, were all colored basically the same so even though Bigby was going through them wholesale at one point, I had no idea who was dead and who was not.

Story wise this was an interesting conundrum for Bigby. He kind of helped create the mess and was at a loss as to how to finish it. Technically no one in that town is a true Fabletown resident. None of them came from the Homelands, or were born from parents who fled the Homelands (such as Snow and Bigby's children), and thus the charter didn't cover them. On the other hand they weren't exactly Mundys (humans). He basically let it play out, hoping for a graceful outcome, but knowing the outcome would be far worse then anything he wanted to find.

A word to Oda, she tried to seduce Bigby (for what reason is never quite explained, we really only have Bigby's own guess) and he turned her down flat. If she goes prancing off to Fabletown and mentions such a thing to anyone (even in jest), Snow will find out and Snow will put a silver bullet in her chest before Bigby can so much as blink. And I will pay good money to see that. ( )

3.5 stars

Bigby (the Big Bad Wolf) has travelled to a small town in Iowa (Story City) to investigate whether or not Fabletown might relocate nearby. He is surprised by what he discovers there – it’s a town of werewolves! Not only that, the two people who head the town are people from Bigby’s past during WWII. Bigby is known (and revered) amongst all of Story City’s residents. But there is dissent within, and Bigby will get caught up in the “disagreements”.

For those who don’t know, this is a spin-off of the graphic novel Fables series. As with the rest of the series, the colour illustrations are very well done. I have not always been all that interested in Bigby as a character, but I liked this story. It’s been a while since I’ve read any of the Fables series, and it was fun to read another. ( )

Bigby Wolf is one of my favorite characters in the Fables world, but I'm still not thrilled with this spinoff, where he ventures into the Midwest on a mission for the rest of the Fables. The artwork was drab and unappealing, and all the inhabitants in Story City looked too much alike. (I realize that might have been intentional, but I still didn't like it)

There was little to none of the humor I usually find in a Fables graphic novel, and there were really no surprises There was never any suspense or fear that Bigby was in real danger—at least some of his foes from other books have given him a run for his money. Oh, and the Nazi scientist lady stayed evil after being turned into a werewolf? Wow, that's a stunner.

I think I gave this 2 stars instead of 1 for old times' sake. Fables is one of my favorite series. That, and I liked Bill Willingham's note at the end about passing through the real Story City. ( )

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/NojBdfdace0

Enjoy! ( )

Solid addition to the series. Bigby's one of my favorite characters and this was a fun little sidestory. ( )