Customer Reviews

The Names of Magic (DC Comics Vertigo)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I was younger, I had fantasies of being a great wizard, of being able to conjure things from thin air with the power of words and gestures. I doubt I was alone, as magicians are a special favorite of children, who aren't so skeptical to search for the wires and trick pockets. The Vertigo series, "The Books of Magic," taps directly into those fantasies in its depiction of young Timothy Hunter, who can not only perform feats of magic, but is destined to be the greatest wizard of all time. That is, if he can survive adolescence.

In this he, of course, resembles that other famous fledgling wizard, and the stories have some of the same moral lessons along with their sympathetic protagonists. Harry Potter is written for young adults, and while Tim Hunter's tale is part of the Vertigo line, suppossedly a comic (or today's preffered term, the graphic novel) meant for adults, in this particular case it rarely contains anything more shocking than prime time TV.

The latest installment of Tim's story, The Names of Magic, doesn't really add anything to the drama of his story, but it does fill in some of the pieces of his mystery by answering the question of his parentage. It's a well done adventure, presented nicely, and a welcome addition to the series, but I do hope that there's more to "The Books of Magic" than this as several threads from the main tale remained unfulfilled, especially the powerful love story between Tim and Molly.

The original Books of Magic had wonderful, quirky dialogue that's mostly missing in the Names of Magic. NoM reads like the screenplay for a B-grade spy movie. If the characters weren't the same I'd say this didn't belong to the BoM series at all.

NoM does tie up some loose ends, but not all of them, and not in a particularly satisfying way - the fight between good and evil for instance. I can't believe Araquel's whole purpose boiled down to that.

This is a worthy addition to the Tim Hunter chronicles, with fine art & some nice lines (Constantine: "Sometimes I wonder if [being a magician] is really worth it... the rest of the time I just know it's not.").
Iolanthe, half-human half-faerie, is the most engaging new character (new to me anyway). The Walker & Nick Bearclaw are appealing if somewhat cliched, but the bad guy, Lily, initially scary, fails to convince. He's a poor imitation of Preacher's Starr (with a similar power of vocal command to Jesse Custer's) & his girl-pop obsession is just cringeworthy.
It's ultimately moving & really adds something to the overall mythos, but the ending feels very rushed - story & characters could have done with more space to breathe.

This book was meant to be a starting point for Tim--to finally start growing up and moving into a different stage of magic in his life. The novel is good in that it introduces a new setting and new plot points, namely Tim's magical name and a school of magic to go and learn from. Ultimately I didn't feel overly in love with the book despite the fact that it didn't have anything necessarily wrong with it, but as mentioned, it's more of a staging point, a new take off for Tim, rather than anything necessarily intricate or breath-taking. In short, it's meant to be the prologue of a new journey, not a stand-alone special story like the original Neil Gaiman Graphic Novel "Books of Magic" that kicked off the series.