This summer, comics writer/artist Mike Oeming is finally publishing a project he and Bryan Glass have had in development for years, a fantasy epic called The Mice Templar (above). Newsarama gets the inside story on the book's origins, including a stint in the famous Robert McKee screenwriting seminar, but the very nature of the project raises big questions for comics fans...because one of the biggest surprise hits of 2006 was David Petersen's Mouse Guard (below).

"I won't lie, I was freaked out!" [says Oeming on first learning about Guard] "Then I saw the previews and I saw David was going for a very different vibe. Once I read it, I realized they were as similar and yet different as any superhero team book. Justice League and the Fantastic Four are both superhero books—people fighting evil in tights with superpowers in a large city—but they are completely different. Templar and Guard are of the same genre, the same specific genre, but are executed quite differently...

"David's book has an air of sweetness about it, and I mean that in a great way—it's very endearing, yet has an undercurrent of danger and menace...a great balancing act. Templar I think is the opposite: it's more menace and danger with undercurrents of sweetness."

The good vibe is mutual, with Oeming and Petersen both showing up in the article's comments thread to praise each other's work.