I think I finished reading Jackoffables. That one started strong, but by the end it had gone completely off the rails. Maybe it was just that I didn't understand what they were even riffing on anymore. Also, I really dislike when comics become too wordy for their own good, as in, huge text dumps in every word bubble with only a cursory sketch to convey the speaker's emotion. The Walking Dead suffers from this immensely.
I was really on board for Fables up until they vanquished The Adversary. Everything I read after that felt like treading water. I honestly wonder if they had originally intended for the series to continue on beyond that.
Did you say you mostly read it in trades? I think that would have helped me. I remember getting into 100 Bullets and reading most of it in a couple sittings until I caught up to the ongoing story arc. Then after a few issues spaced a month apart, I couldn't even remember who was who or what the hell was going on. 100 Bullets is kind of needlessly obtuse with its chronology to begin with, and I was completely lost.
Does Vertigo still have a fairly decent presence in the comic world? I can recall trying to read practically everything that came out under the label and most of it was good. Seems like DC is more about their superheroes these days. They canceled Hellblazer and folded Constantine into mainline DCU, didn't they? That's awful.
I confess that Ii read that as "Jackoff tables" first. But yeah, Jack lost virtually all its stream after the Great Fables Crossover. The ending was horrid. I never thought the Babe the Blue Ox segments were funny either.
Post-Adversary storyline was a bit of as letdown, but not for long. The Mister Dark stuff was cool, and then they started on Bigby and Snow's kids and their fates. Not all of it was great, but it was worth the read. I certainly got the idea that it was cancelled before they were done with storylines, thought, since so much was left hanging or hastily wrapped up.
I read most of it digitally, which was still out of order, but I numbered it according to a suggested reading order I found on a fan site. It flowed pretty well, though some of the surprises were not as effective due to foreshadowing that was lost by not following the publication sequence. So that's a choice to make.
As far as Vertigo,I have no idea: I stopped following DC when they rebooted the whole thing. Lack of continuity may attract new readers, but I took it as the end of a universe I had followed for over thirty years, so I just don't care. And the Transformers books are so good right now that I'm totally fine with it.
