Crossing Midnight was an American horror/fantasy comic book series set in contemporary Japan. It was written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Jim Fern and Eric Nguyen, with covers by J. H. Williams III. Vertigo, a DC Comics imprint, published the series. Due to poor sales, the series concluded after 19 issues. Carey has said the series was born out of his love for Japanese and Korean films, such as My Beautiful Girl, Mari, and horror manga by creators such as Junji Ito, Hideshi Hino, and Shigeru Mizuki. Carey's version, however, is still intrinsically western. It is, he says, "Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen set in Nagasaki". Plot Note: The following synopsis broadly covers the events of the first four issues. Nagasaki twins Kai and Toshi are born either side of midnight, an unexpected result of their father's frivolous prayer at their grandmother's shrine. As they grow up, Toshi becomes seemingly invulnerable to harm; a fall onto railings as a child causes the spikes to bend while she walks away unscathed. Kai himself proves impossible to injure with a knife. Another strange event affects them years later, when they and a childhood friend, Saburo, find themselves entering a magical fantasy world through the Sannō Shrine. When Kai spots a strange man stalking them, the twins run back to the real world, accidentally trapping their friend behind them. Still later, as teenagers, they find themselves once more confronted by the man from the fantasy land. He is Aratsu, a god of swords, and has come to collect Toshi as payment for their father's prayer years before. Toshi refuses, so Aratsu kills her pet dog. This causes two policemen, the mysterious detective Sato and the mute detective Yamada, to investigate. They begin to follow Kai around and it is implied that they know more about what is happening than he does. After refusing Aratsu again, Toshi decides to rid herself of him by stealing a gun from a young thug named KK, who threatens to kill her in retaliation. Meanwhile, Kai finds himself taken back into the fantasy world by Saburo, who has not aged since he was last seen. Saburo now serves a red dragon named Lord Rinjin who is the mortal enemy of Aratsu. Rinjin tells Kai that if Toshi refuses Aratsu a third time, he will have to leave her alone. He tells Kai to ensure that this