Issues #36 to 41 are a 5-part story entitled 'Homelands' (with a 1-issue interlude in issue #39). As you can expect of Jack, this is a very engaging and witty tale. It deals with the adventures of Jack in LA to get into the film industry and acts as a sort of prelude to the Jack Of Fables solo series. Issues #34 and 35 are a 2-part story entitled 'Jack Be Nimble', with David Hahn as guest artist. A 2-page introduction by Matthew Sturges (co-writter of the Jack Of Fables series).

The Contents of the book are the following: All of them written by Bill Willingham, with most of the art in hands of Mark Buckingham and the covers done by James Jean. It reprints issues #34 to 45 of the original series. This is the largest Fables Deluxe Edition so far, with 304 pages of pure and genuine goodness. I definitely will collect the entire series. But overall we can ignore these disappointments. Finally some of the stories are trite and should have been omitted. Some artwork is brilliant and some downright crude. This normally would not be a problem if the artwork were equal across artists and if there was little variation in how the characters are portrayed. My only real complaint is the use of multiple artists on the same fable character across this epic. This a much high value product than the DC archives series which retails for $49.95 or higher. Sometimes the comic is printed a little too close to the binding making it difficult to read, but these occurrences are rare. The binding is glued which is not a problem given the size of the publication it is of course problematic for the larger DC omnibus or absolute editions.

The comics are printed on high quality paper and the print quality is superb. When you consider the price of comics these days, this is a high value way of collecting this series since each edition has close to 10 comics and can be found on Amazon at about 40% of MSRP (or around $16 each + shipping). The oversize deluxe edition with gorgeous dust cover is a fabulous way of reading this sweeping epic of fable fantasy for mature audiences, especially if you are a first time reader like me. This is an absurdly creative graphic novel equal in calibre to the works of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.

Fables the deluxe edition