Okay, if I only marginally liked the Crossover with its literary tropes, I was very disappointed again to see the resurgence of the same kind of things in "Super Team." Except this time we moved on into Comic Tropes. It was....meh. In my opinion. ( )

Well that's a crazy story. Mr. Dark is on the move and the Fables have decided that in order to fight him... they have to become Superheroes? You know, honestly, given that they've been proven to be more powerful based on how many people know their stories, it kind of works.

And hey, it gives you bizarre scenes like this:



And super lamb:



And magic hair:



It works. ( )

The Fables series got a touch kitschy in this volume, even though it is clear that they were aiming for a farcical take on superhero comics. Unsurprisingly, Pinocchio, the comic book obsessed child (who claims he's got the maturity of an adult, but has yet to prove it), is the ringleader of the Fables "Super Team" who shall vanquish Mister Dark once and for all. His assumption is that if you lump together a bunch of people with some sort of supernatural power, put them in silly spandex costumes, and give them cliched superhero alias' they are sure to triumph.

Anyone in touch with reality (which surprisingly the Fables series usually tries to perpetuate) knows that Mister Dark can't be defeated by anyone but a peer, that is to say one of the "great powers" who are ideas personified into the world. Obviously these characters are few and far between, but it was mentioned in one of the previous volumes that the North Wind (aka Bigby's father) is one of these great powers, yet he's not even considered when the Fables try to come up with some sort of strategy. He may be a royal pain in the a**, but they could have at least asked, since he has a certain fondness for his grandchildren even if he doesn't really like the rest of the Fables community.

I wasn't very impressed with how quickly the battle with the Dark Lord happenned, and how easily he was vanquished. The solution was obvioius to me long ago, so instead of beating around the bush and creating doomed teams of superheros the Fables should have been capable of figuring it out too. At least Mister Dark is gone (he was a bit too predictable for my tastes), and some new plotlines were revealed. It seems that Miss Sprat has almost gotten what she wants, but we'll see if her newfound beauty will miraculously change her cantankerous personality. I'm also curious to see what happens with Bliss, Beauty and Beast's baby. Obviously she has inherited her father's curse, since Beast is now fully human, but it doesn't really seem fair to saddle a baby who can't find her true love until she's grown up some with a curse like this. Though maybe her changing abilities will be completely natural and less curse-based? ( )

This installment was a "tiny" bit of a let down. Mr. Dark gets dealt with for the final time (we hope) we see the true side of Mrs. Pratt (I didn't love the story-line about fat women being ugly on the outside AND on the inside), and the fables (specifically Pinocchio have waay too much fun trying to pick out their super hero costumes to battle Mr. Dark. It wasn't as strong as some of the past volumes, but it did move the story forward and it was enjoyable, it just wasn't quite as up to snuff as some of the others have been. Never fear, I still plan on reading the rest of the series! ( )

A bit of an anticlimactic finish to the latest story arc, especially when compared to the brilliance of the previous volumes.