#5. Jack of the Fables, Vol. 1: The (Nearly) Great Escape
Written by Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges and Tony Aikins, illustrated by Andrew Pepoy

This is just one of two Jack of Fables volumes out this year, both worthy of inclusion, as is another 2007 title, Fables: Sons of Empire. The Fables series has been bubbling under for years now, but for some reason — could it be all the sex and violence? — it rarely gets much mainstream critical hype. The premise is that all the people and creatures in nursery rhymes and fairy tales are real — Cinderella, Little Boy Blue, Humpty Dumpty, Prince Charming, and of course Jack (of beanstalk fame, among other things). They've been exiled from their native lands and forced to live undercover in New York City. What makes the series work is the loving but also very unsanitized treatment the fables get: there's a great deal of fighting and hooking up. Is it a travesty? Or could it just possibly be closer in grim, gritty spirit to the original Grimm-era fairy tales than the Disneyfied, infantilized versions we're used to?