Customer Reviews

Mystic v. 1: Rite of Passage

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Giselle is your ultimate rich, beautiful, party animal and she likes it that way. Her sister Genevieve is the responsible one who is about to be promoted to guild master of one of the seven major guilds and gain access to the spirit of the founder of her guild (a magical spirit who has seen just about everything).

All Giselle wants to do is party. All Genevieve wants is her sister to show up for the promotion and not embarass her. Someone or something else wants to shake up the world before it's too late. So suddenly Giselle has all the power of the seven guild spirits, the former guildmasters after her life, more power than she can handle and a heck of a lot more responsibility than she ever wanted. It does make life interesting, while she can keep it.

The color quality and other production values are excellent. The art is very good (the monsters look monstrous, the beautiful women look beautiful, etc). The story is dramatic and compelling.

How do you foist responsibility on a feckless socialite? Why, with a random handshake, of course. Or that's the way it works out in MYSTIC, the first ongoing series trotted out by CrossGen Comics back in 2000. One such random handshake gives our heroine something more worrying than cooties.

On the planet Ciress magic is a very real and pervasive element. Society is structured around it. Everything, in fact, is run by the seven magical guilds. All her life the gifted and no-nonsense Genevieve Villard had strived and studied, determined to become a Guild Master, and at last she's on the cusp of achieving her goal. But then, during her Rite of Ascension, the mystical ritual which officially elevates her to Master of the Nouveau Guild, the fickle universe gives her a wink.

In the audience at Genevieve's ceremony is her capricious younger sister, Giselle, and Giselle couldn't care less about magic. She'd rather keep an eye out for the next party. Imagine her distress when a passing handshake from a stranger results in a mark on her right palm, and this mark suddenly activates and disrupts Genevieve's Rite of Ascension. Suddenly the spirit of the Nouveau Guild's founder - meant to pass into Genevieve to act as guide and repository of all arcane knowledge contained in her guild - instead is sucked into Giselle. But it doesn't end there. Giselle's mark also yanks the founding spirits of the other six guilds from their hosts and then plants them within the party girl. Oh, she doesn't like this. Just like that, though disinclined and wholly untrained, Giselle had become the most powerful sorceress maybe ever in the history of Ciress. Her older sister is pretty cheesed.

MYSTIC Vol. 1: RITE OF PASSAGE collects the first seven issues of the ongoing series, as well as the five-paged story from CROSSGEN CHRONICLES #1, and the narrative immediately draws you in. The studious Genevieve was originally intended to be the series protagonist but Ron Marz connived his way into making it be the irresponsible Giselle instead, and this works better in terms of group dynamics and character arc. The humorless Genevieve is a tame character, and she's already incredibly responsible. It's absolutely more intriguing that Giselle is the sister ending up with the sigil. She has further to travel to achieve that same level of maturity. She's also a more fun character to hang with.

The mark on Giselle's palm, that sigil, apparently creates a "synthesis of all the major magics." Meaning that she might know squat about magic, but she can still wield the damn thing, and effectively. But it doesn't help that most of the spirits trapped within her rail against their captivity. Their original hosts want the spirits back in the worse way, and since these hosts are pretty formidable magic users themselves, they quickly make things tough and dangerous for Giselle.

Also aggravating Giselle is an odd feline-ish pet (called a squit) that came out of nowhere and began speaking to her. Giselle decides to call it Skitter (although it prefers the name "Dirk"). Skitter reminds me quite a bit of Snarf from the Thundercats. But Skitter the talking cat pales in comparison to how frustrating it is that Giselle finds herself stuck in this tattered outfit - her "magic" seems intent on keeping her in it. So, you see, weight of the world on her shoulder and the girl is still flighty.

Writer Ron Marz was a CrossGen workhorse (he also penned THE PATH, SCION, SOJOURN), and he's good again in MYSTIC. Nothing fancy here or even new, really. Marz just delivers good old solid storytelling, core characters with well-definied personalities, and a heroine reluctantly undertaking a compelling age-old journey. MYSTIC boasts sibling rivalry and inter-guild intrigue and politics and magical throwdowns. Marz easily creates a sympathetic voice for Giselle, convinces you to overlook her more stereotypical traits. Given, artist Brandon Peterson puts Giselle in so many provocative poses and in skimpy outfits that sometimes it's a bit too much, but dang she looks good. Peterson has admitted that his art style is inspired by art nouveau, and, yeah, a lot of his visuals here do seem decorative and ornamental. I like it. A cool bonus in this trade, by the way, is that each issue is preceded by a text page which features various of the creative team offering behind-the-scenes stuff on the series. MYSTIC got cancelled when CrossGen Comics went bankrupt in '04, but it's still recommended reading. Better late than never, right?

OK, after reading Sandman, I tried Preacher. First book was great, others not so. I tried all kinda books, some were good like first issues of Strangers in Paradise and Mangas like Oh My Goddess and Blade of Immortal, there were some nice Marvel Knights like Paul Jenkins' stuff, but then I discovered Crossgen, well written comics which have well illustrated stories. I LOVED Meridian, The First, and , of course Mystic. They can be rated teen or all ages. Buy all trades of Mystic, both original writer and Tony Bedard were great.

I got all trades of Mystic and read comics that follow. It's a SHAME if nobody publishes those comics collected as trade five, six and so on, because they get greater and greater near the end.

As far as I know, Mystic and just a slightly weaker Meridian have story ending logically, there is a wrap up. Sojourn was more popular, but CrossGen bankrupted before story ended. Sniff :(