Advance Review: It’s A Mad Libs World In ‘Swan Songs’ #4

Ahh Mad Libs, those fill-in-the-blank games that help to pass the time on long car rides. The quasi choose your own adventure stories are usually good for a laugh or two as the mile markers pass by.

In Swan Songs #4, Bobby Halburn uses a version of Mad Libs to pass the time as he serves a prison sentence. At the story’s opening, he’s being released to a halfway house after two years of incarceration, and a guard who knows his love of word games gives him a copy of Sad Libs.

But life on the outside is too full of choices, Bobby quickly learns. His brother and their childhood friends are planning another bank heist before the bank forecloses on their mother’s house. He yearns for the simpler days where he was told what to do while in prison.

Writer W. Maxwell Prince delivers an examination of free will here. For Bobby, free will is more of an illusion. He believes that he is part of a story that’s already been written. His part is simply to fill in the blanks, just like in the game. Prince doesn’t deliver a verdict on whether free will is a sham or the real thing – though perhaps just by raising the question, he’s answering it. Instead he leaves it up to the reader to decide, just like (spoiler alert) the story’s ending.

Artist Caitlin Yarsky illustrations effectively portray the characters. You can tell Bobby at first glance, just as you can tell his brother is going to be trouble. It may not be the most subtle approach, but it’s effective – and there’s plenty of subtleness within the story anyway. And she draws a pretty mean tiger (what else would you expect when you play Mad Libs?).

This issue of the anthology series about endings may not be the strongest in the run, but it is likely to keep you thinking about the choices you make and how much control over them – and yourself – you ultimately have.

Swan Songs #4 will be available for purchase on October 18, 2023.