Part of an ongoing series revisiting graphic novels and collected editions from days gone by....

The Dark Ages begins in the immediate aftermath of the great war that toppled Geppetto, the mastermind behind an empire that oppressed the Fable Homelands for centuries and caused the deaths of countless residents of those lands. Now, with the war over, Pinocchio begins trying to acclimate Geppetto to life as a Fabletown resident, a circumstance in which he finds himself unwillingly but without recourse.

It's not easy to get used to a mundane existence when you are accustomed to running multiple empires and having every word obeyed instantly and without question. Geppetto is, shall we say, grumpy about the situation. So, too, are the many denizens of Fabletown and its upstate Animal Farm who suffered many losses at this command. It would probably be best for Geppetto if he didn't go off wandering alone....

Boy Blue's recovery from a spell-poisoned arrow continues, and it's not going at all well for the hero. Mowgli and Bagheera, escorted by Bigby's disgraced wolf brothers, return to their jungle world to see if it's ripe for repopulation now that the threat of the emperor is gone. The unlikely couple of Rose Red and Sinbad get suddenly married. And the vast rooms in Fabletown's mystical Woodlands building in Manhattan are disappearing under mysterious circumstances, along with their vital and valuable contents.

Meanwhile, Freddy and Mouse (a pair of looting mercenaries based on Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser) are seeking booty in the aftermath of the war and inadvertently open a box that imprisoned the powerful sorcerer Mr. Dark, the literal personification of the Bogeyman, who had been sealed up many years ago by the emperor's forces. Now free, he decides to loose his malevolence on Fabletown, which apparently hasn't suffered enough.

And, after suffering the death of a prominent Fables character in the previous collection, the community has to bear the loss of another.

Obviously, the storyline did not end with the conclusion of the war and the downfall of the emperor in the long-running series' 75th issue. Bill Willingham still has more story to tell, and he's taking the series in a new, somewhat darker direction with this book.

I do have a quibble with the rotating stable of illustrators on this book. While I understand that artists have different styles, I still wonder why in the first chapter of this book characters such as Snow White, Geppetto and King Cole look exactly as they did in prior books, but the likes of Bigby Wolf and Pinocchio look like completely different people. Stylistic differences aside, they should at least follow a basic guideline so regular characters are recognizable.

Otherwise, I have enjoyed reconnecting with this series after so many years. Now, after having caught up to the point where I stopped reading back then, I am excited to see where Fables goes next.