Mice Templar #1

It's an odd bit of unintentional symmetry--two books about mice with swords hitting stores within months of one another. Like Deep Impact and Armageddon coming out in the same year, or those two crappy volcano movies.

Yet as far as I can tell, Mice Templar was born long before Mouse Guard, and in such a way that it's impossible to believe that either book picked up any riff from the other. It's just a freaky coincidence, is all.

Mice Templar is a bit more than just "mice with swords," anyway; it's sorta like Lord of the Rings with mice instead of hobbits, rats instead of goblins, and cats instead of dragons. Michael Avon Oeming's art on this title is all jagged edges and dynamic action, yet you could still imagine the book easily animated into a pretty kick-ass cartoon series.

Where this first issue stumbles is where many first issues stumble--in setting up the premise and story of the series to come. Oeming and co/writer Brian J.L. Glass have a pretty clear path in this book--in just one issue, it already seems to be shaping up to be a classic Joseph Conrad "hero's journey" for Karic, the last survivor of his dead village, guided by the fish gods into pursuing the legacy of the lost Templar mice. (I wasn't high on dope when I wrote that last bit, either.)

Yet there's too much setup here, and not enough meat for the story--it's hard to tell the mice apart, for one thing, to the extent that when it's finally just two mice talking to each other on the last few pages, it's a relief. And while it's possible the seemingly dead denizens of the mouse town could actually be alive, and play central roles, it feels more like we'll just be following lead mouse Karic and his Obi-wan-esque sidekick as they venture off to defeat the rats.

Intriguing series, lots of potential, probably gonna be a great second issue--but this first issue is a bit overwhelming.