The June Alley Inn in Barkstone has a tradition. Mice with outstanding tabs are allowed, once a year, to participate in a storytelling contest. The best story, decided on by the innkeeper June, has their tab cleared. For those of you who haven’t heard of David Petersen’s Mouse Guard, it’s a series focused on mice with a medieval society, similar to the Redwall series of books, only a thousand times more awesome. (I am decidedly biased.) Legends of the Guard is the series’ anthology, where each mouse’s tale at the June Alley Inn is one of the stories contained within.
As always, Petersen’s art in the transition scenes is perfect, packed with enough detail in a single panel to put other artists to shame. (Sorry, other artists. I still love you.) A pleasant surprise, both the transition scenes and one of the issue’s tales focus on members of the Guard, which, in spite of the series’ title, hasn’t been the case in previous volumes.
The first tale, “The Gosling and the Ghost,” by Mark Buckingham (Fables) on story and art, Todd Klein on letters, and Lee Loughridge on colors is a cute, little story about an unlikely member of the Guard, Roland the Rotund, and his attempts to solve a farmer’s goose problem. Buckingham’s art is a perfect fit for the Mouse Guard world, featuring a detailed, busy, and colorful story that is the perfect opener to this year’s volume of stories. The story is equally as great, expanding upon many ideas already introduced in past Mouse Guard stories and introducing a couple of new ones.
The second tale, “The Mouse and the Moon,” by Skottie Young (Rocket Raccoon) has a rather unusual art style and, in particular, way he depicts mic that threw me off at first. Young’s style can best be described as a twisted, messy storybook that I found charming after the initial surprise wore off. Young’s story is a fable of the Territories and a unique twist on classic ideas about curiosity and having someone learn something for themselves.
The third tale, “The Armor Maker,” by Hannah Christenson (Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: The Novelization) would be my pick out of this issue, if I were June. Christenson paints a wonderful tale of an armorer who aspires to be a knight. Her drawings of the armorer’s imagined great deeds and her designs for mouse armor and weapons alike are something to behold. Christenson really gets into the detail of the armor, putting a lot of thought into how a suit of armor would work for a mouse, in addition to making it look really darn cool. The story is a classic underdog in over his head story, as the armorer finds himself given the opportunity to make his dreams become reality when he is asked to take a knight’s place.
Altogether, Legends of the Guard is off to a strong start in Volume 3. The first issue is set to arrive in stores on March 11 and can currently be pre-ordered at your local comic book store using order code JAN15 1140.
Five Adorably Awesome Mouse Knights out of Five
