There Be Unhappy Spoilers Hereabouts!

Fables 128-129
DC Vertigo
Bill Willingham, writer
Mark Buckingham, artist

In case you missed the header: ************SPOILER ALERT!************

I believe these issues are the last ones of the recent "Snow White" arc in Fables, all of which I have enjoyed reading, as always, except for one major plot point: They've killed off one of my favorite characters -- Bigby Wolf! To paraphrase the Emerald City coroner from "The Wizard of Oz," he's not only merely dead, he's really most sincerely dead. I say that because while Snow and several of the Fabletown witches believe there might be a chance to revive Bigby -- who was turned to glass then shattered -- this entire story arc has been narrated by an adult Ambrose, one of Snow and Bigby's children, and right after the shattering occurs, Ambrose says, "And that's how my dad died."

Now these are magical characters, so anything is possible down the line. But Ambrose's pronouncement seems to be a final nail in Bigby's coffin. To top it off, Bigby would not be the first major character to be killed off in the course of this series. Prince Charming died previously, as did Bluebeard, and both have remained dead ever since. And let's not forget Boy Blue, a major fan-favorite character of this series, killed off in the war against the Adversary. He's still dead, too.

There have been hints in recent months that bad things were going to befall the Wolf family. One of Snow and Bigby's kids has already died and another was forever changed, and not necessarily for the better. Now it looks like Bigby has died. He can always appear again in flashbacks, but it will be sad to know he is gone from the series in such a final way.

As for the rest of the issues, this arc has had Snow treated pretty poorly at the hands of Brandish. Bigby interrupted his search for the pair's missing cubs in an effort to save his wife, but did not fair so well against Brandish's trickery. Naturally, she's sad at Bigby's loss, but Snow is happy to be the one to strike down the villain as she vowed to do early in the arc. And she fulfills that vow with panache and style.

The artwork by Mark Buckingham is one of the highlights of this series, and he doesn't disappoint this time out. Both the fight scenes between Brandish and Bigby in No. 128 and between Brandish and Snow in No. 129 give a clear sense of the action and swordplay.

All in all, nicely done; I just wish they hadn't done that!

UPDATE: Just this past weekend, before this post went up but after I'd written it, news came out of ComicCon revealing the cover to Fables No. 134, which depicts -- Boy Blue and Bigby! No other details accompanied the release of the cover image, but there is renewed cause for hope. Especially since Prince Chaming has also recently been brought back from the dead in the pages of the Fables sister title, Faiest.