Mice Templar is a story quite unlike any other. The great talents of Michael Oeming, Brian J. L. Glass, Victor Santos and more come together to make a very unique comic. Though all the main characters are mice, it’s anything but a cutesy animal-centric story. Full of prophecy, battles, revenge, drama, and more, Mice Templar tells of young Karic’s journey and his apparent destiny.
With the first few pages, Karic tells of the Mice Templar’s internal struggles and how King Icarus came to power by killing his brethren. Two groups of mice reach an uneasy peace as they travel together towards their eventual goal. Along the way, they see a mouse village being attacked and are unable to do anything about it, as dawn is approaching. The next night, they survey the carnage, seeing an entire village slaughtered. Drawn to the death, wolves attack the group, though are eventually driven away. In the middle of this chaos, Ronan makes a grim decision to further spite Karic.
Though the overall story is a collaboration between Oeming and Glass, Glass is the writer. The story harkens back to the idea of knights, as the word “Templar” in the title would imply. It’s full of bravery, battle, sorrow, and bitter rivalries. The opening portion where Karic retells the story of the Battle of Avalon is great both as a grounding in Templar lore and as a well done recap for new readers. This issue emphasizes the often shown gap between the older Templars and the new, such as Karic, and how set in their ways many of the older are. This piece of story adds wonderfully to expanding Mice Templar mythology that has been built over the last three volumes, with mention of the one million Templar who were at Avalon, though this seems very at odds with the number of mice we’ve seen throughout the series.
Victor Santos’ art has been very consistent over the last two volumes. It’s shadowy, angular, and just a bit cartoonish, though never straying into the realm of children’s cartoons. Along with the colors variously by Veronica Gandini, Chandra Free, and Serena Guerra, Santos’ art helps to capture the “Shadow Time” in which the mice exist.
This, the final arc, begins with a bang. It’s a quickly paced and excellently presented book that gives very high hopes for the volume as a whole.
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