Dates
- Cover date
- December 1993
- On sale
- October 28, 1993
- Pages
- 68
Editions and covers
Story arc: The Children's Crusade (Vertigo)
This is part 2 of 3. Reading order by cover month and on-sale date; arc records can be incomplete.
- Black Orchid Annual #1
- The Children's Crusade #1
- The Children's Crusade #2
Creators
Stories
- Chapter One: Nine Days' Wonder · 5 pages
All children from Flaxdown disappear.
- Chapter Two: True Detective Stories · 8 pages
Avril hires the Charles and Edwin to find her brother who disappeared with the rest of the children from Flaxdown.
- Chapter Three: The Innocents · 5 pages
The back story of the Children's Crusade. In the crusades of 1212, 50,000 children were sent to battle and none returned. An old monk was involved.
- Chapter Four: The Fat Begins to Fry · 8 pages
Charles and Edwin appear to be ghosts and travel to Flaxdown to find clues to the missing children.
- Chapter Five: The Piper and the Gate · 8 pages
The back story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin is told.
- Chapter Six: Charles Rowland to the Dark Tower Came · 8 pages
Charles has a vision of the Vertigo children; he needs to help them cross the frontier.
- Chapter 7: The Hole · 6 pages
A back story of the Children's Crusade; the children from the crusades disappear from confinement by playing hopscotch.
- Chapter Eight: What Comes Out of the Chimney? · 9 pages
Charles and Edwin accidentally summon a girl who tells them children are in Free Country but she does not take them there.
Publisher’s description
Neil Gaiman, writer of THE SANDMAN, tells a powerful and mysterious tale that begins when all the children of an English village mysteriously vanish. Rowland and Paine, the two dead boy-detectives introduced in The Sandman #25, investigate the disappearances and learn of the existence of the otherworldly Free Country. But the denizens of that realm have conceived a mysterious plot that involves several young beings of power - Suzy, the child Black Orchid; Animal Man's daughter, Tefe; Dorothy Spinner of the Doom Patrol; and Tim Hunter, the young mage introduced in THE BOOKS OF MAGIC. Continues in Black Orchid Annual #1.
Reprinted in
Free Country: A Tale of the Children's Crusade (2015), The Books of Magic Omnibus (2020)