I spent last weekend reading a bunch of the old Myspace Dark Horse Presents trade paperbacks, and was disappointed that their Strong Women collection was mainly a collection of stories about women who'd been sexually or emotionally traumatized overcoming their past to become strong. It's a tired trope that takes a talented writer to make it work. Terry Moore can do it. Joe Kelly. Brian Wood. But, for the most part, I'd prefer to see stories about strong female protagonists where their back story doesn't involve a lot of victimhood.

Bill Willingham's women tend to be his strongest characters. While Jack Of Fables is a bit wide of the mark, the flagship Fables book is filled with strong-assed (the badness of their asses need not be the main issue) princesses who aren't defined by childhood trauma. Oh, sure, fucked up things happened to them when they were young, and often it involved Prince Charming. But Willingham introduced us to the characters as three dimensional people before he filled in their back stories. We knew shades of these princesses from Grimm Fairy Tales, and Disney movies, but Willingham gave them a lot more depth. So I was excited to see that his next spinoff, after the crappy fanfic-like Jack Of Fables, would be a series that focused on his princesses. So I was really let down that the first issue is all about Ali Baba.

It seems clear that Willingham is merely setting up the story. Soon, it will be all about the ladies. But he really could have set the stories up in the main title. The strength of his previous spin-offs (and Jack Of Fables did start strong, even it quickly devolved) was that they started right in the midst of the story with the main characters.

Unfortunately, I was so perplexed as to why we were spending time with Ali Baba, that I was rushing to see when we'd get to the supposed main characters. I had to go back and read the book a second time to learn that it wasn't just the false expectations that caused me to race across the pages, I just didn't find the Baba story engaging.

The only thing that really worked for me in this book was the art, which is superb. From Adam Hughes's cover through every page of Jiminez's pencils, Lanning's inks, and Dalhouse's colors, this is a gorgeous book. Each artist's work complements the others', even the iFanboy.com ad is beautiful.

I'm going to give the title two more issues. But that's 20% my faith that Willingham will make this into an engaging story, and 80% respect for the visual artists.