I love fairy tales and I love comics, so I've been following these collections. I liked the Spider-Man and X-Men trades, but I think that this is the best of them all.

The first tale is a retelling of Peter Pan, with Captain America filling the title role and the Scarlet Witch as Wendy. I thought that this one was really cute, and the ending tied in well with Captain America's origin. I also really liked the art.

The second tale is Pinocchio, with Henry Pym as the inventor and the Vision as Pinocchio. This one was also really cute, and the art was lovely as well.

The third tale is Alice in Wonderland, and it features the Young Avengers. The author did a wonderful job of adapting the characters to match the originals (Speed as the Rabbit was particularly cute!), and once again, the art was great.

The last tale featuring the Avengers was a retelling of the Wizard of Oz. Wanda is the "bad" witch, Magneto is the Wizard, and She-Hulk is Dorothy. There's no Toto, but Iron Man as the Tin Man is a brilliant choice, and I liked how Thor was the Scare Crow (too weak to swing his hammer). Captain America as the Cowardly Lion was a stretch, but oh well. He had to fit in somewhere, I suppose!

The other two tales in this collection are reprints. One is from the Spider-Man Fairy Tales trade and is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Out of all of the stories collected in this trade, this one is probably my least favorite, but it's still good. And then there's one reprinted from the X-Men Fairy Tales collection, a retelling of The Friendship of the Tortoise and the Eagle. This is my favorite one in the collection, bar none. It illustrates Magneto and Xavier's friendship wonderfully, and I always get a little teary reading it. The art is sketchy, but for some reason it fits the story perfectly.

My only (minor) complaint is that Marvel has reduced the size of this trade and printed on less durable paper. I wish that they would stop doing this.

I rarely give five stars for anything, but I was absolutely enchanted with these tales. The author did a wonderful job of blending the established comic book characters into the fairy tales. ( )