The Books of Magic

Earlier in the week, frequent Burning Leaves commenter and my eerie personality doppelgänger Andi over at Tripping Towards Lucidity posted an incomparable essay on why she reads comic books and graphic novels in her column “The Finicky Reader” at BiblioBuffet. For those of you who peer through opera glasses and swirl glasses of brandy while you read my reviews, oftentimes finding yourself stumped as to why a well-educated young woman who holds a master’s degree in English literature (pronounced lit-ra-chure amongst the opera-glasses-and-brandy crowd) and teaches writing for a living would waste her time reading those silly ol’ comic books of all things – Andi answers all your questions, and she answers them well. So now I don’t have to go through the trouble. Click on the link to her column to go read it.

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Review

Neil Gaiman’s The Books of Magic is an unusual work. While it has a coherant narrative structure, it seems to serve more as a showcase of the various magical characters residing in the DC Universe than Gaiman’s usual ponderous fare. That’s not to say it’s entirely devoid of thought-provoking material – it just comes off as more of a Who’s Who List reminding fans that DC’s repetoire extends beyond superheroes than a labor of love for the fantasy genre.

In a plot echoing A Christmas Carol, four of the universe’s most adept and feared practitioners of magic – The Phantom Stranger, Doctor Occult, Mister E, and the always enjoyable John Constantine – guide mortal child Timothy Hunter through various fantastical realms. They intend to sway his latent powers towards the side of magic rather than science, and Gaiman characteristically incorporates elements from sources originating in all time periods and movements in order to piece together a rich, atmospheric story. To an extent he is successful, but as a whole The Books of Magic seems rushed and somewhat disjointed. Even though Zatanna and Jason Blood are always welcome and interesting characters, having to include so many figures from DC’s roster forces the story to move too quickly and leaves intriguing themes only lightly explored. It is not unreadable by any stretch of the imagination - Gaiman bequeaths John Constantine with brilliantly dry, sarcastic dialogue, and Mister E and Timothy’s excursion to the end of the universe includes some fantastic concepts – but as a whole it is not one of his essential works.

The painterly style of the artwork recalls delicate watercolors and could easily stand on its own separate from the dialogue. It is so beautiful, in fact, that oftentimes it distracted me from reading. Rather than working in tandem with the writing, the artwork diverted attention away from it, which only served to add to the overall sense of unevenness. However, I appreciated that, like the writing, the artists also draw their inspiration from a wide variety of eclectic materials. There were times when I felt like I was watching a fantasy interpretation of a Talking Heads video instead of reading a comic book.

Bibliographic Information

Gaiman, Neil, and John Bolton. The Books of Magic. New York: DC Comics, 1993.

Further Reading

Anyone interested in Gaiman’s ability to amalgamate history, philosophy, mythology, and other sources ought to read his masterful Sandman series. It is a quintessential example of postmodern fantasy, and some of his iconic Endless characters even have cameo appearances in The Books of Magic. Here, Gaiman is given enough space to introduce and flesh out a staggering cast of characters as well as delve deeply into weightier subject matter.

~Riot, who apologizes for the large spans of time between posts as of late. She’s been crazy busy and a touch sick.