Back when I was regularly going to the comic shop and buying physical comics (instead of reading web comics, which I do primarily now), the Courtney Crumrin stories were some of my favorite comics to pick up. Despite having a young protagonist and a kid-friendly 7+ rating, they had enough darkness to appeal to my cynical nature, and enough faeries and goblins to appeal to my inner fantasy geek. As such, I was really happy to pick up a few Crumrin stories at Comic Con. Courtney Crumrin in the Twilight Kingdom is a TPB collecting the four issues of the limited comic series of the same name. I'm finding that I prefer TPBs, as they're more fun to read and they look spiffy on my bookshelf. The only thing I really miss is the pretty cover art. All of the covers are reproduced in the back of this book, but they're in black and white, which isn't quite the same. Twilight Kingdom picks up where the last series, Courtney Crumrin and the Coven of Mystics, left off. It finds Courtney dealing with the after math of her decisions in this prior story, and she's really not in a good place. Suffering the disappointment of her uncle, she finds herself more isolated before, and a trip to her old hometown doesn't make matters better, when she finds out how much her former best friend has changed in her absence. I have to admit, I had a hard time getting into this series. In the years since I read the past comics, my reading tastes have changed a bit, and the narrative style put me off at first. My enjoyment of Naifeh's art and the characters kept me going, however, and in the end it paid off. Upon arriving home, Courtney finds herself in a school for the children of the coven, where she struggles to fit in. Through an interesting series of events, this leads her and several other students into the Twilight Kingdom, which is where things get interesting. Whenever Naifeh takes his stories into the realm of the night things, he draws me right in. I've admitted it time and again, I'm a sucker for faerie markets. And this story gives the added treat of some really touching interactions between the Twilight King (whose twiggy/antlered head puts me in mind of the god Cernunnos) and one of the young students. If there's one thing that I dislike about kid-friendly comics in general, it's that everything is so bright and happy and there's never any sense of danger, suspense, or wrongness with the world. Naifeh writes comics for children who are serious thinkers, I believe. Even though they're at a level that kids can understand, they're not sanitized. There's anger, bitterness, sadness, scary situations, violence, harsh consequences, moral dilemmas and more. It's the sort of comic I would have enjoyed reading when I was a kid, and one that I still enjoy reading now. If you have a kid who enjoys fantasy, especially with darker leanings, or you're an adult who enjoys those things and doesn't mind a kid-safe comic, you'd do well to pick up any of the Crumrin comics. I'll be reviewing the other two new-to-me books in the October and November CT issues.

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Copyright © 2008 By AJ Reardon E-mail AJ at: ErtheFae@aol.com Visit AJ at: www.erthefae.com