Drunken Comics Rage

So I’m a sucker for stories that involve walking, talking, and sword fighting animals.  Think Secret of Nimh and Redwall, and you’ll get what I’m talking about.  So it was with great anticipation that I cracked open the Amazon delivery box to pull out my copy of the hardback collection of David Petersen’s Mouse Guard: Fall 1152.

Greater detail can be found on the Wikipedia site for Mouse Guard.  In short, the six-issue story centers on a colony of mice living in a medieval era.  The mice are spread throughout various towns and cities; the Mouse Guard patrol the roads between these towns and cities, guarding travelers and keeping the pathways safe.  Along the way they walk, talk, and sword fight.

I was a little worried when I cracked the book…I set my expectations a little high by looking at it roughly 3,147 times at last year’s con, checking the price roughly the same number of times on Amazon hoping for a deal, etc. But I enjoyed the hell outta the thing.  I might read it through another time or two to see what I might have missed. I think my only gripe was I wanted it to be longer

(Oh, and I really like the packaging/presentation of the book itself. I always strip off the…cover?…of these things so I don't bang it up as I carry it around. The 'real' front and back cover are really nice, though, so I got all leery about getting it marked up in my bag or whatever.)

The book read FAST. Dialog was sparse, and narrator-dialog was nonexistent. That's ok…but dialog slows me down, which is good. I felt I was blowing through it, so I was forcing myself to put it down after each chapter, which kinda broke the flow a bit. Another reason to read it straight through again…

I enjoyed the look and feel of the art. There's a bit of vagueness or fuzziness or…maybe a lack of crispness/sharpness…to the overall 'look' that made me actively pay a bit more attention than usual, which isn't a bad thing.

The artist manages to make mouse facial expressions and body language convey a lot.  The scenery was gorgeous, as were the overhead shots of the towns and such. They would sprinkle in pull back shots to subtly remind you how small the mice are. They also used…I'll say silhouettes…throughout. Sometimes it was to add a bit of mystery to a shadowy figure; sometimes to add depth to a limited-size panel (silhouettes of an army of mice behind its leader); sometimes to add in some scary to a scene (silhouetted wolves in one of those pull back shots with a teeny mouse between you and them).

One nit, and I do mean a nit: sometimes things seemed inconsistent in the panels showing a given bit of combat. Panel 1-2 starts a fight between two mice; panel 3 shows one mouse posing with a sword in the right hand and a dagger in the left; panel 4 shows the same mouse, in the same apparent spot, now with the sword in the left hand and throwing the dagger with the right. Panel 5 ends the fight.

I lay out that example (almost straight from the pages of the book) to illustrate that 1) it seemed like the intent was to show the whole fight, and not snips, and there was no cutaway 2) it seemed like the intent was to show the steps 'in order' and 3) the hands were backward, and hence my nit

The bit of irony here is that I probably wouldn't catch stuff like that except I'm looking more closely than usual at the art because 1) I'm trying not to cnosume the damn thing so fast and 2) as mentioned, the art has an element of fuzziness to it so I look closely so as not to miss things.

The number of characters was fairly small; only something near ten were even really given names. Despite the lack of dialog I came away with a clear 'sense' of each one: the hardcore hotheaded dangerous guardsman, the even keel leader type, the newbie, the old vet, etc. Rereading that, they might seem cliched; I didn't feel that way reading the book. Hell, there wasn't enough dialog for it to leak into cliche.  Overall I was pretty impressed that (even as quickly as I read sometimes) I quickly found each character's personality with less than the usual volume of dialog.

The story itself moves quickly.  They also don't hold your hand much (another result of little dialog) by having characters talk about stuff they already should know just for the reader's benefit.  You never get lost, though; what you perhaps do lose is increased impact from not having the right context. In hindsight it would have been nice to have a primer of sorts.

You know from little intros or the summary from Amazon that mice have established little towns in safe havens, and that the Mouse Guard serve to patrol the pathways connecting these towns, protecting travelers. But until you dig into the maps at the end of the book, you don't realize how MANY towns there are. Or which ones are important. Or WHY they are important. So when the Guard finds a dead mouse with a map of Lockehaven it is clearly an OH SHIT moment, but you don't immediately know why.

And as I talk that through…perhaps that's intentional. Maybe this is a teaser, deliberately. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and came away with a ton of questions…questions which imply I want to know more.  What's this Weasel War? What is this political undercurrent of dissatisfaction that is hinted at? How does this complex and complete mouse civilization, with farmers and candlemakers and carpenters and the like, really work? And is that REALLY the legendary Black Axe of Guard lore?  Good stuff.

The Epilogue was pretty well done; the lady mouse who is the Matriarch of the Guard is writing in her journal and revisits each character to talk about what they did immediately after this story ends and what she thinks the future holds for them, both in her plans and otherwise.  Sadly it'll be much later this year before the next collection, Winter 1152 I believe, comes out.

I believe I read that David Petersen will be at the San Diego Comic-Con this year; I might have to hunt him down and tell him to write and draw faster.

Filed under: General Comics Rage, Monkey Rage