Mark Carey and Jim Fern, Crossing Midnight (Vertigo, 2007-). $2.99, monthly.

by Jared Gardner

Mama warned me there’d be days like this. Days when the whole enterprise of comics seems to be a blot on the soul of society (and not, as it should be, the gutter-art that promises to renew energy and narrative for a new generation). Crossing Midnight, a new title from the increasingly uneven Vertigo lineup, lays claims to Miyazaki influences, which only makes this derivative, poorly written, and heavy-handed, weak excuse to capitalize on what Vertigo editors obviously (and wrongly) believe to be the uncritical appetite for all things themed Japanese. I hope, and I suspect my hopes in this rare instance will be rewarded, that the readers to whom this transparently pandering and profiteering title is directed will see through it and let it follow so many similar attempts to reclaim 14-year-olds from those foreign infidels stealing our children’s souls money.

Our story takes place in Nagasaki, where our protagonists’ father once made an offering to unseen gods to appease his superstitious mother. “What’s the harm,” he said to his wife, disgusted by his pusillanimity. The harm becomes clear, as it so often does, in high school, when the unseen gods come to reclaim their debt and to call the children to their rightful destiny. The narrator is a boy (I only insist on this fact because Jim Fern has a strange—and frankly endearing—tendency to obscure gender difference in his characterizations) whose powers are still not fully realized at the time we go to press (and for us never will be, as we intend never to read this book again). His sister Toshi, however, has the remarkable talent of making it so that blades cannot touch her. (Remarkable, that is, assuming that one is planning to live in a pan-Asian fantasy of samurai and Yi-Mou Zhang flying dagger flics—which, it quickly becomes apparent, is exactly where our writer, Mike Carey, plans to live for as long as this title will carry him).

There is a wonderful Studio Ghibli-moment early in the run when the siblings and a young friend end up in a magical world from which only two will return. But that is a minor note in a larger drama of flying cutlery and the requisite characters from every manga Carey has read in his six months of research for this project: mystical samurai, conflicting advice from an equally mystical dragon-guy, a juvenile delinquent boyfriend, nosy but well-intentioned parents, and a wise and inscrutable old grandmother. The art is at times quite sparkling, especially in some of the splash pages (of course with lots of knives en route). But the writing is clunky and rings false at almost every turn, in large measure because of the terribly ill-advised decision to tell the story through the past-tense narration of brother Kai.

Need I go on? Need Crossing Midnight? I fear it will, but I for one will be praying to unseen gods that it returns to the focus group from whence it emerged as quickly as possible.