G33k!

There comes a time when, unless you are a furry, you are expected to put your storybooks about animals aside – most likely somewhere between 10 and 12. At this point you graduate into more adult fare like VC Andrews and Stephen King and have no time for anthropomorphic cats outwitting wildebeests while flying miniature hang-gliders. I mean, really, that’s dumb kid stuff. Who’d want to read that when they could read about incestuous families living in creepy Victorian manors and/or demonically-possessed vacuum cleaners.

But David Petersen, author of Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 (Archaia Studios Press) has rejected this line of thought entirely. He has created a graphic novel chock full of cute, anthropomorphic mice yet quite clearly not aimed at the elementary school crowd. Unlike Brian Jacques’s

Redwall series (which it has been accused of ripping off, since both feature mice with swords), Fall 1152 leans more toward the dark atmosphere of Watership Down and features an intrigue-filled tale of conspiracy and murder.

Where the graphic novel gets most interesting, though, is in the interplay between art and story. Petersen takes care not to let one tread on the other’s feet and the result is a book filled with page after page of amazingly rendered drawings which languidly tell a story of corruption and rebellion – never rushed, never compromised, keeping its eyes firmly fixed on the main story and never diving too deeply into the individual characters’ lives. All of this has the singular effect of creating a dream-like atmosphere where you do actually believe that Mice need to protect themselves and their borders from the predations of weasels, snakes and crabs.

This, of course, is what we all believed when we read our various favourite childhood books, and what we’ve somehow allowed ourselves to forget. With that in mind, then, when our nieces and nephews, and sons and daughters come to us and say, “I don’t want to read The Cricket in Times Square again – that’s for babies,” it’s our civic duty to press a copy of Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 into their hands, because we all have to grow up sometime, but nobody said we have to lose our sense of wonder and certainly not by reading stories about incestuous lamps.

NEWS:

_Unless you have no contact with the internet at all, you are probably aware that LiveJournal recently exploded in a SNAFU of truly magnificent proportions. Essentially, a somewhat shadowy and questionable group, ostensibly crusading for children’s rights, convinced the LJ powers that be to initiate a mass banning based on a blanket keyword search. While scouring for keywords like “lolita” and “rape” had the effect of removing a small amount of genuine pedophile hangouts from LJ, it also managed to persecute hundreds of completely legitimate fan-fiction groups, Nabakov forums and rape relief organisations in the process. Bottom line: pedophiles suck, and sweeping infringements of people’s right to free speech based on accusations flimsier than cotton candy suck too.

_The self-published indie comic juggernaut known as Strangers in Paradise has finished a decade-long run with the release of issue 90, earlier this month. This is not nearly as long as Cerebus’s 300 issue record, but on the other hand it’s a lot more straightforward and a lot less misogynistic. Kudos.

_Speaking of things that started a decade ago, My one-line announcement of the forthcoming Starcraft 2 in the last issue has somehow propelled the original Starcraft box set back to #5 on the PC games sales charts. This doesn’t happen. Gamers aren’t backward compatible; they don’t play old games – they keep their eyes glued to the horizon, always looking for the next big thing. I think this is some kind of sign. What’s next? I’ll tell you: human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria.

_Producer Ron Eick has announced that Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica will be the last, and as sad as I’ll be to let go of one of the best science-fiction shows of the last… well, ever, it’s still good to see that Eick has learned the lessons handed down by Calvin and Hobbes – go out on top and always leave ‘em wanting more.

JUST RELEASED:

_You may want to don that new Jimmy Olsen “Countdown” t-shirt this week (the one that makes it look like he’s coming out of your pants), because the Jack Kirby Fourth World Omnibus V.1 is coming out, and all devoted Fourth World fans know that DC villain extraordinaire Darkseid first appeared in the pages of Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen. After you’re done being a colossal fanboy, you can sit back for a motherfuckin’, cocksuckin’ good time with Deadwood: The Complete Seasons 1-3. Then, when you’re all drunk, surly and foul-mouthed, watch the Powerpuff Girls Season 1, because there’s no cowboy palate-cleanser like our sheriffs from Townsville.