4 out of 5

By shifting the theme a bit more toward heroism and discovery, vol. 2 corrects the more wandering feeling of vol. 1 and delivers four solid issues of various takes on Guard Mouse tales.  The structure is once again provided by Petersen, patrons at a bar told that they can clear their tabs by telling the best story, with our MG creator drawing and writing linking material.  Which, it should be added, is seamless – a lot of books try the framing format and it doesn’t feel edited in correctly, but Petersen concocted a pretty perfect setup and his cast of characters are so richly detailed that you can feel them telling each tail.  We also get the inclusion of a couple “big” names (no offense to the hard work of all the other creators, of course) – Stan Sakai and Bill Willingham.  While neither creator had to stretch too far from the genres for which they’re recognized, their presence speaks more to the solidity of volume 2.  Vol. 1, in comparison, felt like Marvel’s ‘Strange Tales,’ in a way, just a hodge podge of indie creators.  This wouldn’t be a bad thing except Peterson’s framing stuff is so grounded that the transition to the pieces felt too schizophrenic; here more work has been done to smooth it out – one character is playing a tune in the background through a few issues that eventually turns into the book’s final tale.  So it seems that Dave learned from volume one, and maybe made it more clear that the focus is on the guard – or tales highlighting discovery or heroism of some type – and thus the four issues read as though they could be from one mind, which is nice.

The “easter egg” of the cover pictures being included in the bar is again nice (and the inner cover descriptions of those covers are still fun and inventive), and also thankfully repeated is the commitment to pick a winning story.

Lastly: freaking 2-page splash!  Pretty awesome in the square-bound format.

There’s a nice sense of friendliness and familiarity to volume 2; while I’d like to see more MG tales, I’ll be equally entertained if Petersen can continue the comfortable groove of this volume of Legends with a volume 3.