I still have the two issues that bookended Vertigo's Children's Crusade crossover, a terribly over-ambitious idea full of brilliant ideas that never fully meshed. Nonetheless, the first bookend, written by Gaiman and drawn by Bachalo remains one of the most potent, mysterious, atmospheric, sad and thrilling comics ever produced. The second issue wrapped things up quite well, I always thought, even though though the two together never felt like a whole story. Even if you read the other relevant issues in the crossover, they were a bit all over the place and uneven. The art in the Doom Patrol issue was dire, if I recall correctly. Anyway, Gaiman has talked about it before, and about the difficulty of getting the Vertigo writers to mesh, and he reiterates it here in the introduction.

So this collection finally gives the curious the chance to see what it was all about, and it's certainly worth getting for that opening. Toby Litt, who had an excellent run recently on Dead Boy Detectives, and Peter Gross do their level best to patch something all together in the middle with results that are readable, at any rate, but the sheer number of moving parts and plot points barely touched on in the originals makes it a bit rushed and crowded. Some of it doesn't fit very well, making it seem awkward, and a far cry from the eerie, sinister atmosphere of the opening. I also can't help but wonder if the Black Tower stuff was best left undeveloped - it was wonderfully enigmatic and mysterious as it was. The story makes more sense, believe it or not, but it unavoidably ends up being laborious about it, sacrificing pace and atmosphere - squishing three or four issues' worth of story into a few pages is never going to make for a properly seamless result.

So the missing children of Flaxdown and the the Dead Boy Detectives and the children of Vertigo set out on their Crusade once more. Fitting that after an rousing opening it all dissolves into a bit of a mess, really, don't you think?