C2E2 REVIEW: MOUSE GUARD WINTER 1152 #4

Ugh.  Not another book about mice being fantasy soldiers.  How many of these things have to go around before this subgenre goes away?  Well, probably a lot more, because the industry clearly isn’t tired of this trend yet.

How does MOUSE GUARD WINTER 1152 #4 fare?  Not too well.  It’s the story of 3 mice soldiers—Saxon, Kenzie, and Sadie—who are on some quest or other.  Along the way, they fight owls and bats . . . and that’s it.  Truth be told, the scene in which one mouse faces off against an owl is pretty cool, and when it happens with a bat a few pages later, it also looks pretty cool.  The problem is, that’s all writer and artist David Petersen seems to be going for.  He’s very good when it comes to imagery, especially when Saxon is rolling around in a mountain of mouse bones, but when it comes to story, he’s a bit lazy.  The poetry sequence is well done, but everything else is just too business-as-usual.

There is one exception:  when Saxon finds the bones of his mentor and breaks down.  It is not only a well-written scene, but it is also powerful and achieves the perfect emotional apex.  And the tone of the book is very nice, too.  It’s reminiscent of the old WATERSHIP DOWN cartoon.

Another problem with Petersen’s writing:  when he has mice referring to their own kind, he does something cutsey, but highly unrealistic.  One of the characters refers to his house as a “mouse dwelling.”  Female mice are referred to as “ladymice.”  That seems like a bit much.  For example, do we call our own houses “human dwellings”?  Or women “ladyhumans”?

All told, it’s a darkly beautiful book, but there isn’t much substance here.

MOUSE GUARD WINTER 1152 #4

Written and illustrated by David Petersen

Published by Archaia Studios Press

$3.50

24 pages