Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. An awkward British teenager with glasses is destined to become the greatest or worst magician of all time. Sounds familiar right? Well, you haven’t quite read that story like this.
Written by Kat Howard
Illustrated by Tom Fowler
Colored by Jordan Boyd
Lettered by Todd Klein
From the SANDMAN UNIVERSE #1, it’s the return of Neil Gaiman’s magical morality fable in an all-new series written by Kat Howard (Roses and Rot, An Unkindness of Magicians) and drawn by Tom Fowler (DOOM PATROL)!Timothy Hunter may be destined tobecome the most powerful magician in the universe, but he’s still a London teenager, and having magical abilities complicates things more than it helps. It’s not like he can use magic to pass his exams, stop being bullied or convince his cute friend to date him. And while Tim’s trying to live his life, there are cultists who want to kill him, believing his power will eventually corrupt him into becoming a merciless mage. Oh, and those are the good guys. Luckily, his new substitute teacher is more than she appears, and may be able to help Tim discover the mystery behind the Books of Magic…
“Books of Magic” is in a different spot compared to the other Sandman Universe titles. Most of those titles exist with a connection to the surreal Dreaming and adjacent realms where everything and the nature of storytelling is at play. They also largely act as continuations of previously established stories or characters, “House of Whispers” being a clear exception. By appearances, “Books of Magic” is lacking in these regards. While this is a magical narrative, it isn’t tied into the Dreaming. The series lead is a young Timothy Hunter, not an older version, which gives the series a reboot feel. However, as its strip in “Sandman Universe” made clear: appearances can be deceiving.
Despite the lack of connection to the Dreaming, “Books of Magic” is more a throwback to the wider magical books of nineties Vertigo. Writer Kat Howard begins this series with a direct illusions to the potential of reading it as a meta text about storytelling and magical narratives in a thoroughly comic book way. The first batch of art by the team of illustrator Tom Fowler and colorist Jordan Boyd is a collage of visual and narrative styles and mediums. This collage represents the team’s awareness of this through intermedia reflexivity, the act of one medium attempting to pass for another one. The very first page is a fusion – – traditional comic art overlaid with the lettering and style of an illuminated manuscript. Howard’s first words, “once upon a time,” is the common refrain to the beginning of Western fairy tales. The next page continues this trend by representing the Trenchcoat Brigade as if they were a tapestry, doing as they do in Timothy Hunter stories attempting to guide the marked magician. Subsequent pages go even more extreme fusing together rock carvings, with comic panel as pop art, cubism, papercraft, and photography.
In starting this way the series firmly entrenches itself in the ideas of Gaiman’s “Sandman” and simultaneously addresses/sidesteps any questions about “Books of Magic’s” connection to the previous series. You could easily read these opening pages as a recognition of past series, or you could read it as the dream it is contextualized as, and come away satisfied with either idea. The possibilities are kind of magical.
By going down the route of intermedia reflexivity, the creative team revels removing the veil of comic realism most books so strenuously employ. In that revelry it also heightens how the art doesn’t quite match the real thing. There is a lack of texture in these representations which makes them read false. The best is the ballpoint pen sketch of Phantom Stranger that looks like it was scanned in from a torn piece of paper. The tapestry imagery, while evoking the style of embroidery, lacks the texture and finish of fabric. Artistically, this kind of reflexivity can be done quite well, in “Detective Comics” #983 Bryan Hill and Miguel Mendonca re-purpose the comic page to represent the act of viewing television.
Continued belowQuibbles about the let down of a piece of art reveling in how unnatural it is aside, the opening sequence is overall artistically and narratively effective. Throughout the opening 5 pages, Timothy Hunter is pictured apart from the other medium and styles. He exists in the reality of the comic, constantly questioned by the Brigade if he wants to make a choice between magical or mundane. What that means is cleanly represented in the art of these pages, even if Tim Hunter doesn’t fully understand what that choice fully means.
Kat Howard makes no bones about what lesson Tim Hunter will be learning in this arc, and likely the series as a whole: while magic is a tool that can be wielded for good or ill, it is ultimately the choice and cost of that choice that defines things. To be a bit oxymoronic, there is a sleek bluntness to Tom Fowler literally illustrating that in a book and presenting it from the point of view of Tim Hunter. It is blunt in that it is a book magically speaking the theme, but putting the reader inside the eyes of Hunter in that panel is both visually elegant and a callback to the lessons fairy tales and fantasy fiction in general help teach the reader. This is one of the defining points J.K. Rowling made in her Harry Potter franchise.
By making it clear what the operational theme of this arc (if not the series at large) will be about, Howard and the art team are able to use it as an anchor with which to hold and characterize Tim Hunter with going forward. At first blush, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this version of the character, or if the issue had actually done enough with work the lead to make a judgment reasonable. Aesthetically, the book is preoccupied with ideas of storytelling and making its own theme clear, which isn’t the mode of a traditional character piece. On subsequent reads, it becomes clear how well Howard uses this thematic anchor to develop scenes of Hunter reacting to these ideas and showing us who he is, as well as giving the art team enough room to visually characterize him. Hunter’s reaction to what the book tells him about the nature of magic – – that he doesn’t want “consequences,” he wants magic – – beautifully illustrates how teenaged he is. Much like his lament to Dr. Rose about the magical juices not magically appearing despite fate divining him a great and terrible magician, Hunter wants all the power but lacks understanding on what that fully entails.
Some of the facial work Tom Fowler does in this book can be a bit awkward; smiles read as strained in spots. There is a joke to be made about British stiff upper lips and all. Their best work comes when the scene isn’t about selling the narrative through facial expressions, but is more reliant on body language in general. After Tim gets home from school he sits around his room and just kind of lounges around doing stuff without really doing anything, before curiosity gets him. It’s a four panel sequence but it does a good job of capturing the meandering passage of time boredom can create. It echoes the four panels on the previous page as his Dad sits depressed alone in the dark with only the pale glow of the television for illumination. These are surprisingly mundane moments for a book that is so aggressively stylish in other pages, but that’s the difference between the mundane and magical.
As with the rest of the Sandman Universe line, “Books of Magic” exudes artistic style and the promise of stories. Of the bunch this is among the better first issues in how it develops theme and character. The point made in this issue and Tim Hunter’s awkward teenaged self may be a bit obvious or expected, but how they are executed is quality work.
Final Verdict: 8.5 – “Books of Magic” gets off to a strong self-aware start as the education of Timothy Hunter, greatest or worst magician ever depending on the point of view, continues.
