This started out well but really began sputtering out midway through and never found its way back.

The concept is good. The setting is good. A lot of the details are interesting, twists on folklore, children's games, old rhymes, Robert Browning, and the possibly somewhat historic Children's Crusade. On top of that, the two detectives are ghost boys! So it was really hitting all my favorite things, not to mention probable inspiration from J.M. Barrie's Neverland.

After a while, issues stopped connecting well. I had to infer a lot for seemingly no good reason to make an inkling of sense of the plot. Some characters that were made to seem important were just suddenly dropped. You can almost hear the authors scrambling to patch this up.

The saving grace is that the Dead Boy Detectives are consistently amusing. ( )

Gaiman's whole introduction is about how tough it was to draw these stories together as a whole, with the different artists and visions and plots, and unfortunately, it shows. Even with a re-written middle, the story is clunky and disjointed.

A very strong idea: the abused, neglected, and forgotten children of the world find themselves in Free Country, a place just for them, but there's trouble brewing. The actual story of the Children's Crusade is incredibly effecting and well told.

The late plot twist (I guess that's what you'd call it, even though it doesn't really affect the plot) that the Council used magic to change their appearances didn't land at all. Why weren't they suspicious of Jack Rabbit when he didn't take off his disguise, like everyone else? Why don't they use this magic for anything else?

Ultimately, nothing really happens and even when it does it's confusing. ( )

Before this newly compiled edition of Free Country I had never read the original two issues, but I can definitely see why they rewrote the middle section of the story to bind the two halves better together. Even with the extensive editing that went on, a few moments of dissonance remain between the two halves - nothing to really interrupt the story as a whole, but I definitely noticed that not all of the "special" childrens' summoning stories were included and found a few of Charles' and Rowland's trials to be a bit fluffy. The whole story of the Free Country as a safe haven for children is one that is very intriguing, though, especially considering some of the historical content that Gaiman wrote into the initial story and how this character of the evil priest returns as a magically subsidized entity. Overall, it's not a very tightly woven story and could use some further editing (and some additional mini-episodes to flesh out some of the details and characters), but it's definitely an entertaining read and an amusing example of Vertigo's early attempt at a crossover series. ( )

Free Country: A Tale of the Children’s Crusade collects the seven-issue crossover story from Vertigo Comics, including The Children’s Crusade nos. 1 and 2, Black Orchid Annual no. 1, Animal Man Annual no. 1, Swamp Thing Annual no. 7, Doom Patrol Annual no. 2, and Arcana Annual no. 1. The material was written by Neil Gaiman, Toby Litt, Rachel Pollack, Alisa Kwitney, and Jamie Delano with art from Chris Bachelo, Peter Gross, Al Davison, and Peter Snejbjerg, inks by Mike Barreiro, colors by Daniel Vozzo and Jeanne McGee, and letters by John Costanza and Todd Klein. This trade paperback includes new material that was not originally part of the various issues collected.

The story begins with the Children’s Crusade of 1212 and the Pied Piper deceiving children away from their homes, but the lucky ones are able to cross into a mystical land called Free Country where they are safe from the evils of the world. When an entire village’s children go missing, a girl hires the Dead Boy Detectives, Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland from The Sandman no. 25, to find out what happened to them. They discover that a council in Free Country plans to bring all the world’s children to the land, but first they must trick five mystical children to come to Free Country where their magic will empower the land to support so many children. They need Suzy, the sister of Flora from Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s 1989 Black Orchid story, Tefé Holland, the daughter of the Swamp Thing and Abby Holland, Dorothy Spinner from the Doom Patrol, Maxine Baker, the daughter of Animal Man, and Timothy Hunter, from The Books of Magic.

Though Gaiman and the various Vertigo authors pitched this miniseries as the first crossover between Vertigo’s various titles, it’s primarily a Dead Boy Detectives tale with the occasional cameo. The detectives can be entertaining, but it’s difficult for them to sustain such a large narrative and the differences in the titles is rather apparent between the chapters. Gaiman’s voice stands out clear in his portions, adding some great atmosphere, but the book is most interesting as an experimental work and will primarily appeal to those looking to read Vertigo’s back catalog and the Sandman-adjacent works. ( )

I wasn't a fan of the story or the artwork. ( )