When I hear that a comic I enjoy is going to release an issue with a series of writers and artists, each of whom will write/draw a “side story”, I get nervous.  I feel the same way about “anthology films”.  The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Four Rooms and what I remember about that is….Quentin Tarantino was involved.  And…a hotel bellboy?

The concept here is very House Of Mystery.  In an inn, a group of mice have a storytelling competition to get their tabs cleared.  Each story told in the competition has a different creative team, with the main storyline being written and drawn by David Petersen.

The first story is very much an outline with cool art.  But it’s all plot point, no character development, no extrapaolation, no subtext.  It’s deliberate, as it’s an old mouse telling a story with no flourish.  I never enjoyed my grandfather (who was an awful storyteller)  describing war stories (he never served in a war) because they were told in this fashion.  So I didn’t enjoy this.  But, it certainly evoked that feeling of a bad storyteller telling what would be an interesting in better hands.  I’m going to give Jeremy Bastian the benefit of the doubt and say he has done this deliberately, and that this isn’t bad writing, it’s a stylistic choice.  His art makes me think Mouse Bible.  But not some cheap Mouse Bible by some third-rate mouse artist, Mouse Pope clearly wanted this version of Mouse Bible to look minimilistically lush.

Ted Naifeh’s story comes next.  An escape/odd couple story about a mouse and a bat.  Well told, and drawn stylistically similar (not the same, but similar) to Petersen’s work.

Alex Sheikman  and Scott Keating close the issue with a very simple story that looks very beautiful.

All in all, this was a good execution of an Anthology Comic, and I look forward to checking out the rest of the series.