Magic: The Gathering #4

We're back in Shanghai, and I brought about 50 or so comics from the random box of unread comics in our storage unit to add to the supply we have here. This comic comes from that batch.

Title: Magic: The Gathering
Issue: 4
Date: March 2012
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Matt Forbeck
Artist: Martin Coccolo, Christian Duce
Colorist: J. Edwin Stevens, Baileigh Bolten
Letterer: Shawn Lee
Editor: Carol Guzman
Cover: Karl Kopinski

Hero isn't ready to fight villain. Villain threatens innocent townspeople. Hero bravely fights villain. Villain is winning. Help arrives for the hero in the nick of time.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned (in my review of the second issue) that this story feels very generic. (Note, I also reviewed #1 here; I apparently skipped #3, but that does not seem to have been a problem).

Unfortunately, with the big confrontation between reluctantly heroic planeswalker Dack Fayden, and evil planeswalker Sifa Grent taking up all of this issue, there really isn't a chance for much character development, or even to see more aspects of the Innistrad world beyond "generic gothic horror setting".

There was nothing terrible about this. The art was good. The use of a purple wash to convey "night" looked a bit odd but the visual storytelling was generally fine. There was some action and heroism, but in the end the story was just not all that special or memorable.

Rating: 5.5/10

Magic: The Gathering #2

Title: Magic: The Gathering
Issue: 2
Date: January 2012
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Matt Forbeck
Artist: Martin Coccolo, Christian Duce
Colorist: J. Edwin Stevens, Baileigh Bolten, J.S. Holt
Letterer: Shawn Lee
Editor: Carol Guzman, John Barber
Cover: Karl Kopinski

Promo card for this issue is Faithless Looting. And yes, I'm still buying this series for the promo cards.

Planeswalker Dack Fayden planeswalks (as opposed to plainswalking, which also happens in MTG, but is something entirely different) into the middle of a fight between two Cathars and a pack of hungry vampires.

Wait, correction. Make that one cathar. The vampires made rather quick work of one of the two. The remaining one seems to have entered the fight thinking she was Buffy, but is now starting to feel more like another famous blonde: General Custer. Fortunately, Dack arrives and proceeds to set the tavern where this all takes place on fire. Who does he think he is? Jaya Ballard?

Mayhem follows, then a fast getaway, then a bunch of infodump. We're on Innistrad now. If you don't play MTG (but you do play D&D) , just think Ravenloft and you get the idea. Everyone else just think Transylvania. Vampires can fly here, a fact that Dack finds inconvenient. Fortunately, last issue's maguffin proves to be made of garlic or something because the lead vampire wants nothing to do with that.

Infodump continues pack at the home of Ingrid the Cathar, and the ending of the story essentially serves to introduce the villain.

This story isn't bad. Actually quite a bit of it was fun. But it was also incredibly generic. I'm hoping to see the story move in some more interesting directions now that the preliminaries have been dispensed with.

Rating: 6/10

Magic: The Gathering #1

This had a mainstream national release this week, but I did buy my copy from one of the Templecon vendors.

Title: Magic: The Gathering
Issue: 1
Date: December, 2011
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Matt Forbeck
Artist: Martin Coccolo
Colorist: J. Edwin Stevens
Letterer: Shawn Lee
Editor: Carol Guzman, John Barber
Cover: Aleksi Briclot

Okay, fine. I admit it. I bought this for the promo card. I would guess I'm probably not the only one.

Magic: The Gathering has been failing to translate well into comic form since around the release of Ice Age. This is the latest attempt, with the offer spiced up by the addition of an alternate art promo card (in this case, the card is Treasure Hunt, and the artwork on the card is the cover art for the comic).

The lead character here is Dack Fayden, a roguish planeswalker, who seems to be in some sort of trouble pretty much everywhere he goes. In this sense, Dack is a fairly generic loveable rogue, and much of the book is spent with him on the run from various enemies including Ravnica's cult of Rakdos, from whom Dack has just stolen an artifact.

Stealing artifacts is Dack's business, as it turns out, although he describes it as stealing spells. And Dack discovers that this particular artifact holds a link to his own past, and the first clue on a mission of vengeance that Dack had once followed until the trail went cold. Now, the new clue is leading him to (wait for it...) Innistrad.

The story was fast paced, and there were enough hints of depth to Dack that I was left with hope that he might be more than the cliche that is mostly evident here. I was pleased that writer Matt Forbeck generally kept game mechanics out of the story, as there are few things dumber than a game-based comic getting bogged down in game-mechanics references.

The artwork is good mechanically, but the choice to keep everything dark and on multiple pages to use a red wash over everything does more to obscure the art than to enhance the mood.

Overall, this was a reasonable start, and it is possible that a good story can be built out of this.

And the promo card is nice.

Rating: 5.5/10