It could be argued that Mike Carey has spent quite a lot of his comics career stepping in the footprints of Neil Gaiman, writing around characters that Gaiman created for The Sandman and generally, along with Bill Willingham, filling the socially-realistic-fantasy gap that Gaiman left at Vertigo when The Sandman finished. Nothing wrong with that of course – Gaiman himself wasn’t the first writer to bring gods and fairies into the modern world.
Carey’s Crossing Midnight looks set to be more of the same but with a Japanese twist. A Nagasaki survivor realises that nothing should be left to chance when you can pray to the spirits, so persuades her son to offer whatever he has to in order to guarantee the safe arrival of her grandchildren. As a result, twins are born safely, minutes apart but on different days. But they’ve been granted special powers: eldest boy Kai Hara sees into different worlds; while younger girl Toshi is immune to harm. Until, that is, the spirit her father prayed to, and inadvertently promised her to, comes back when she’s a teenager to reclaim what’s rightfully his.