Thessaly would be quite content to spend eternity reading and not doing anything at all interesting, but has a mean streak a mile wide concerning anyone who disrupts her life or tries to kill her. He does this in order to make her life more interesting and getting her out of the house. Fetch is, despite this, madly in love with Thessaly and winds up signing her up for an obligation: a mission to deal with several monsters. She is being haunted by Fetch, a gestalt ghost made up of the spirits of every person Thessaly has ever killed. To quickly sum up the plot, Thessaly is an older than old witch, who still looks like a rather mousey college girl. This mini-series was a sequel to Willingham’s first Thessaly story: The Thessaliad (available as part of “The Sandman Presents: Taller Tales” at fine comic shops everywhere) and has proven to be a worthy effort, as a sequel, an individual story and one more thing for us fans of Willingham’s work on Fables or The Sandman series in general to collect. And in this, the final issue of Thessaly: Witch For Hire, Willingham concludes what has been one heck of a journey. Only the journey along the way holds our interest. Still, like with all the Fables whom Willingham writes about monthly, it is not the destination that matters. Indeed, the big battle that the whole mini-series has been building towards is barely allotted a single page. It’s All Monsters From Here On Out.” Well, we don’t get much in the way of two-fisted, monster fighting action in this issue. The last issue’s final page promised “No More Talking Heads.

The Thessaliad by Bill Willingham