You know about the trickster character in literature? Most quickly recognized
are probably the Coyote of Amerindian lore, and the Monkey King of Asian tales,
and perhaps Anansi the Spider, from African folklore.
Now we've Jack. He's every Jack (or John) of every fairy tale: he climbed the
beanstalk, he's been nimble, he's been quick--Jack's jumped over the
candlestick...he and Jill climbed up the hill... and so on.
His supporting cast includes the (ahem) Pathetic Fallacy (a literary term,
here-to-fore) who gets inanimate objects to do his bidding; a "hot librarian";
and the villain, Revise, who, well, seeks to 1., eliminate Jack, and 2., retcon
all myth and fairytale.
Where Fables, from whence sprang Jack, deals more largely with fable creatures
at large, and their internal war for homeland, Jack of Fables sets Jack, one
fable at large, in the (ahem, again) Real World.
It's smart, it's smarmy (sometimes), it's loverly drawn: the adventures of a
lovably bad guy.
Try two or three issues in a row.
Matt
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