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While at first appearing to be a cheap ploy to capitalize on the success of the critically acclaimed Mouse Guard, The Mice Templar has actually turned out to have a relatively rich and interesting story. It all still feels a bit thrown together, like there are a few too many diverse elements, but I guess that’s at least part of how they get that “rich” feel. You just stir in enough stuff, and of course you’re going to have a complex story.

So what does Mice Templar have in its plot pot? Other than quite a lot? (Ahem. Sorry.) There are ghosts that bleed, (at least in issues 3 & 4), Fish Gods who bestow our likely hero Karic with a waterskin that never empties, hordes of evil rat baddies who overrun a mouse village and take down a buck whenever they feel like it for food, black “death magic”, a clearly chaotic history muddled with some kind of templar war, some seer mice who possibly tell the future (or the present) by watching grain sway in the wind of swooping owls, and of course a prophesy of some kind.

Issue #1 was great, drawing me in with compelling art by creator Michael Avon Oeming (who apparently draws Powers, among other famous things), but after I read issue #2 (back when it came out) I wasn’t left terribly excited about the series. I felt the story was really quite predictable, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere in the least bit new. I kept it on my pull though (whether out of laziness or a genuine but waning interest), and now that I’ve read issues 3 and 4, I’m glad that I did. I am left wondering what is going to happen to those poor captive village mice. And what waits for us at the tree in the middle of the field (ocean) of grain? Only time and comics will tell!