By: Marc Andreyko (story), Shawn McManus (art), Lee Loughridge (colors)
The Story: One should expect betrayal in the Temple of Rats.
The Review: Any time you join the speculation game, there’s always the chance—a very likely one—that you’re gonna lose, which is why I don’t often play. I lost big-time when I predicted, with great certainty, that the mastermind behind the ninja rodent attacks was Marcel Champagne, one of Cindy’s helper mice from her original fairy tale. I couldn’t have been more wrong, in fact, since the mastermind is revealed to be targeting Marcel for as yet undisclosed reasons.
I was spared from total embarrassment by the revelation that Marcel and the sexually aggressive Isabelle du Lac really did get it on. Now, I’m still holding out hope that perhaps their night of lovemaking spawned a line of descendants that currently ends at our fencing mastermind; if this turns out to be the case, then at least I can still take pride in my alternative theory. But either way, Marcel’s dalliance proves to have some very interesting magical effects, allowing him to remain human when his brother mice changed back to normal.
That’s key to why our mastermind wants to take Marcel in alive, if his obsession with rodents is anything to go by. These human-sized rat warriors already demonstrate some degree of shapeshifting ability, though taking on full humanity seems beyond them, which is Marcel could come in. The question is: do you really care? Three issues in, and our antagonists haven’t shown much of a clear, much less compelling, motivation.
Not that our protagonist is doing much better. For all her running around and tough talk, Cindy hasn’t shown many layers to her personality other than a penchant for sleeping with half the men she runs into. I’m just saying, she’s giving Prince Charming a run for his money in the canoodling department. Actually, I don’t really care who Cindy chooses to bed with and how often, but when some dude just tackles her into a fountain, effectively stopping her from chasing down her target, it’s not great that her very next move is to bonk him. Somehow, you feel like her interrogation of Ramayan should have come before the lovemaking.
But there are quite a few moments in the issue like this that don’t make too much sense. For example, Dickory’s ability to do magic, enough to keep a mortally wounded alive, comes out of nowhere and seems like it was written in just to allow Cindy to escape from a logistical inconvenience. I also confess to some confusion as to why Marcel runs from Cindy when they first spot each other at the airport, but then he greets her cheerfully when she finds him at the Temple of Rats. In a much better story, these would be minor flaws, but in a story that’s so limited in its entertainment value, they’re quite irritating.
McManus is the only consistently solid force for this arc. In fact, he’s making some pretty big strides in his art, slowly refining the overtly comical style he’s recognized for and delivering a more sophisticated look. The last few pages in particular actually look like a serious comic. You can see that Cindy, Ramayan, and Marcel’s facial features are not so exaggerated, resembling humans rather than caricatures.
Conclusion: Light and frothy, but too much so; the substance of the story almost escapes into the ether altogether.
Grade: C-
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – “Ugh. Not one of my better one-liners… But it’s better than hers. Sheesh! ‘Bring. It. On.’?” Let’s all agree, Cindy, that neither you nor your stepsister came out ahead in the witticism race.
Grade
Conclusion