Fables #40

From Vertigo's acclaimed fairy-tale-in-exile series, Fables #40 arrives in October 2005 with one of its most unsettling cover images yet — a lone figure curled inside an ornate birdcage, surrounded by a sea of blank, featureless humanoid forms pressing in from every direction. James Jean's cover work is quietly harrowing, the crimson floor of the cage and the purple ornamental chain above lending a cruel theatricality to what is clearly a scene of captivity and isolation. With Bill Willingham writing and Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha on interior art, "Homelands Chapter Four: He's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage" promises the kind of dark, layered storytelling that made this Vertigo series essential reading.