10 Thoughts on... Fables vol. 2

Fables vol. 2: Animal Farm. Collecting Fables #6-10

-We begin with Snow White forcing her sister Rose Red to head upstate to check on the farm where the non-human Fables were forced to live.

-The farm has all sorts of magic spells put on it to prevent curious locals from investigating. However, upon arriving, Snow White discovers a bunch of spent shotgun casings, and finds the animals holding a secret meeting in one of the barns. The meeting is being chaired by one of the Three Little Pigs, who basically refuses to inform Snow what the meeting was about because the meeting was... you know, secret. Oh, and the former leader of the farm has mysteriously vanished.

-That night Snow White and Rose Red look out the window of the farm house they were staying in and discover the head of one of the Three Pigs on a pike.

-It appears that Goldilocks and the Three Bears(she's married to Baby Bear) had killed the Pig in order to send a message to the other animals on the farm that the time to strike back at the Adversary(who stole the Fable character's lands) was nigh.Well Goldilocks was already a criminal, why not become a revolutionary?


-A fox, who wasn't interested in fighting the Adversary, happens across the morbid scene and runs off, with Goldi proclaiming that the Fox had to die. At around this same time, Rose Red secretly meets(there sure are a lot of secret meetings going on here...) with one of the remaining Three Pigs, who admits that they ordered the death of the other pig, and that they wanted Rose on their side to go after the Adversary. Rose agrees to help.

-The fox winds up running to Snow White and basically fills her in on what had been going on at the farm. Snow and the fox try to escape the farm grounds, but are chased after by a few of the pro-Goldilocks/Pigs animals. A tiger nearly gets its claws into Snow, but the fox distracts the tiger, allowing Snow to get away.I can safely say that it's never a good thing to be chased by a tiger.


-Soon thereafter, the tiger catches up to Snow, claiming that it killed the fox. Snow kills the tiger with a gun she had discovered, and is finally caught by her sister, Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

-Back in New York City, Boy Blue discovers that there was trouble up at the farm after a robin he sent up to check on the situation was killed. He reports this news to the Big Bad Wolf, who is not allowed to go to the farm himself. The Wolf gathers Boy Blue, Bluebeard, Prince Charming and a flying monkey together and sends them up north as his kick-ass posse... That is just insane!

-Snow White finds herself locked up with the former head of the farm, Waylen Smith. With some help from the fox(who wasn't killed by that damn lying tiger), Snow and Waylen get free and wake the giants and dragons who were sleeping at the farm and convince them to(literally) squash the glorious animal revolution. However, their victory is short-lived as Goldilocks shoots Snow in the head from a distance with a high-powered sniper rifle!

-Snow manages to survive(I have NO idea how!), and she gets sent back downstate to be tended to, while Boy Blue and his posse arrive on the scene to set up a war crimes tribunal(HA!). The Pigs are put to death(in an awesomely awful way, since the executioner was inept), while the other leaders either escape(Goldilocks) or are forced to preform hard labor(the Three Bears). In the end we learn that Rose Red never actually betrayed Snow and that she only joined the animal revolution to buy Snow time to escape. Upon learning that, Snow installs Rose as the new head of the farm and they all live happily ever after... Or at least until the nest issue... What do you want, I couldn't resist that line!

Score: 8 1/2 out of 10. I actually enjoyed the first trade a bit more than this volume, but my hatred of talking animals is legendary, so yeah. For a trade that was full of talking animals though, an 8 1/2 is REALLY good!