Dynamite Entertainment, 120 pages, paperback, $19.99

This is, I believe, the first new Mighty Mouse storyline in any medium since Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures cartoon series in the late ’80s. Since I enjoyed the old Terrytoons when I was very young and was (and still am) a huge fan of Bakshi’s Saturday morning show, I had to pick this up.

It’s pretty good. I admit that nostalgia drives me to give it a more positive review than it probably deserves, but it’s an enjoyable, quick read for old fans. It’s just not quite what I was expecting. In this five-part series, Mighty Mouse crosses over from the cartoon world into the “real” world and befriends a young, nerdy, bullied boy named Joey who lives alone in a city apartment with his single, overworked mother. Joey is obsessed with Mighty Mouse, who befriends him and helps him confront his real-life problems. Unfortunately, enemies from Mighty Mouse’s universe also enter the real world and wreak havoc here. It is up to the kid and the mouse to save the day, and up to Joey to get Mighty Mouse back to his world.

So basically, it’s the exact plot outline of the 1993 movie Last Action Hero, substituting a caped mouse for Arnold Schwarzenegger. I guess the biggest difference is that when the good guy and the bad guys in Last Action Hero enter the real world, they have to play by the rules of the real world, not the rules of the action-movie universe (e.g., shooting a car with a single bullet won’t cause it to explode, being shot can easily kill you, etc.). In this comic, however, the protagonists have to resort to cartoon violence to defeat the cartoon enemies — even though they’ve infiltrated the real world. So as you can see, it’s a big difference.

But it’s just a comic book about Mighty Mouse, and it’s good fun. And if the plot is a retread of a classic early-’90s film, then it helps to pile on the nostalgia. The artwork is great too. I’d hope in future installments, though, that they can give Might Mouse more personality beyond spouting adages, and maybe make it more humorous. Something more closely aligned to the Bakshi series would be great. I’m not holding my breath for that to happen, but I still think there’s a lot more that can be done with this series.