YMMV / The Children's Crusade (Vertigo)

• Complete Monster: The being using the alias "Jack Rabbit" is really the latest guise of an interdimensional slave trader specializing in human children. Appearing in various incarnations throughout history, including The Pied Piper of Hamelin, the slaver has orchestrated mass disappearances of children for centuries, and upon discovering the Pocket Dimension of Free Country, disguises himself as a giant rabbit to infiltrate its High Council and use it as a staging ground for his master plan of enslaving every child on Earth. Abducting several children of great magical potential, including Animal Man's daughter Maxine, whom he retrieves personally, "Jack" hopes to use their powers to enlarge Free Country to accommodate billions of children for him to sell across the realms.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: For all that the prologue hypes Tefé Holland and Dorothy Spinner as being important to the plot, neither ends up doing much in the event itself, and ultimately their roles in the event were written out of the new middle section that was added to the collected edition in spite of this same section featuring more succinct takes on Suzy, Maxine Baker and Timothy Hunter's roles in the original storyline, resulting in the two only being acknowledged in the main miniseries serving as bookends for the saga. Dorothy doesn't even get to interact with any of the other main characters.
• Uncertain Audience: This was Vertigo's first and last major crossover event, and it's centered around child characters, despite Vertigo's target audience being adults. Sales were so abysmal that Vertigo swore off doing any further crossover events.
• Values Dissonance: There is a surprising amount of child nudity in the miniseries, including Tefé being introduced nude (with strategically-place vines covering her genitalia), Maxine stripping off her clothes to give to her clone so that she can send the clone back to the real world in her stead, a boy giving up his clothing in exchange for passage to the Free Country, Dorothy squatting with her pants down due to being on her period while unable to get tampons in Free Country, a few topless preteen mermaids, and Suzy floating around with no clothes on (albeit with no visible nipples or genitalia). This didn't attract a lot of comment back in the nineties, as the miniseries was barely noticed, but for modern readers, it can be quite jarring.

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