Jack of Fables Vol 2: Jack of Hearts

Jack of Fables Vol 2: Jack of Hearts (2007) Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, Tony Akins, Steve Leialoha

I preordered Jack of Hearts months ago, because I am a huge fan of Fables. And I was disappointed when there was a delay in publication.

Unfortunately, this volume didn’t really live up to my expectations. When the first Jack of Fables volume was published, I was leery about it, because I don’t actually like Jack. But the story in The (Nearly) Great Escape was very well done, and quite funny. Jack of Hearts just didn’t life up to the start of the series.

Jack is a jerk–no two ways about it. And he doesn’t always understand that he’s a jerk, but he does know that he always puts himself first. in The (Nearly) Great Escape the story doesn’t take Jack seriously, and pokes fun at him the entire time. Here, we get almost all of the story from Jack’s point of view, and I just found him grating.

Not that there weren’t good parts to Jack of Hearts. I really enjoyed learning how the Snow Queen turned evil, but even then I was annoyed by Jack’s role in the story, and his telling of the story. I also likes the twists around Gary, and am wondering whether he’ll end up in the main Fables story.

But none of that made up for reading about Jack taking himself seriously.

So I’ll probably keep up with this series, because bits may flow back and forth between the two series, but I certainly won’t pre-order the next volume. No need to hurry up and be disappointed.
Rating: 5/10

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