This volume of the Courtney Crumrin Tales takes a break from telling of Courtney and Uncle Aloysius's adventures in Europe, and instead presents a chapter from Aloysius's youth. Like the previous volume, The Fire-Thief's Tale, Portrait is a single-self contained story about the length of two or three comic books, bound in a paperback format. In some ways, I think this is the best of Naifeh's Crumrin stories. I enjoyed the historic setting, the glimpse into mysterious Uncle Aloysius's history, and his interactions with the young and forward-minded Miss Alice Crisp. I also felt that the narration was stronger, and less distracting from the story than in the other two volumes I've read recently. Portrait gives us not just a look into Aloysius's history, a time when he was a young and dashing sorcerer just as prone to adventure as his niece is in the modern-day comics, but it also gives us a bit of the history of the conflict between the magic and the mundane. This helps put the events of the modern-day stories into context, and gives the whole story-arc thus far more depth. This comic even had a bit of humor, thanks to the addition of a brave war-hero who is recruited to help take down a wicked warlock, and tries to blunder through with pure brute strength and ignorance. I found myself chuckling at him a few times, because he reminded me of more than a few characters in my various roleplaying adventures, those whose muscles cut off all blood-flow to their brains. Like previous Crumrin collections, this one has a rating of Y: Youth Age 7+. I think it's actually less dark and sad than any of the others, but it also lacks an child characters, so it may not hold as much interest for the little ones. I do hope there are more Crumrin Tales in the offing. Truth be told, I haven't been reading print comics for a while, and these recent months of reading things that I brought home from Comic-Con have reminded me of how much I enjoy a good comic. As this series is one of my favorites, I'm looking forward to reading more of it in the future.

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