Bill Willingham finished fables, and then he wrote another issue. From issue 1, Fables built up to a brilliant, beautiful battle between the exiled stories and The Adversary—a battle that was executed with the grace of great series come to a great end. And then Willingham wrote another issue, and then another, and another, and another until we now find ourselves at issue 87, the beginning of what appears to be a new protracted plotline pitting our fables against the mysterious Dark One who has infiltrated and overtaken their home. The first arc of the series focuses on the bumbling flying-monkey Bufkin—accompanied, of course, by the head of Frankenstein, and the ever nonchalant mirror-mirror-on-the-wall—who has been left in a lost magic room behind enemy lines. Now Bufkin must a find a way to fight his way out through a terrible witch-infused magical threat that he neither understands nor probably could understand. As he has done time and again, Willingham takes characters who have lingered in the wings of this long story and thrusts them to center stage, providing them with rounded, deep personalities that capture the audience’s interest and serve the plot as a whole. As ever he is matched scene for scene, beat for beat in his high level of story telling by Buckingham’s subtly complicated art (there’s an argument to be made that Buckingham’s baroque borders are the most innovative panel technique being used in a popular monthly comic these days). After a wandering but interesting year, this arc of fables has the captured the excitement of the pre-war issues, but the question remains to many Fable readers: Having ended, having produced a complete and epic work of comic fiction, should fables continue? After the last year, and this issue in particular, I think it’s safe to declare a resounding yes. Willingham may have told his tale, but there are more tales to tell; as long as the quality continues on at this high a level the story should continue on right along with it.