Number 43 - The Books of Magic-Bindings - Jon Ney Reiber

 

Collecting issues 1-4 of John Ney Reiber's run on The Books of Magic, this is a reread for me after nearly 30 years (back when I used to buy this particular comic. I wish I knew where the original comics were now)

For a series I  liked as much as this, I remembered absolutely nothing of this storyline.

Tim Hunter is a 13 year old boy who recently was visited by most of DC Vertigo's range of magic users in a mini series by Neil Gaiman.  This was the start of a new continuing series created for Vertigo under the talented hands of John Ney Reiber.

In this volume we discover hidden truths about young Tim's past and, most importantly, his parentage. At the same time he finds himself caught up involuntarily in the affairs of a decaying and withering Land of Faerie, facing a foe who strikes fear into the hearts of the bravest warriors.

The story was as intriguing and magical as I remember (I remember how much I enjoyed it but no details), but the artwork was not as good. In places, the best that can be said is that it's functional.

I stopped buying the comics for financial reasons back in the 90s. I will be trawling the comics fairs for the omnibus editions to try to complete the series.  Then I'll start on the new series that came out more recently which has been confusing my efforts to track down these volumes 

Meanwhile, this is a nice wander down a forgotten alley of memory lane.

Number 89 - the Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

 Neil Gaiman does an imaginative variation on Kipling's Jungle Book.  Instead of Mowgli living in a jungle and befriending the wildlife, we have Nobody Owens, a child who finds himself orphaned and living in a large cemetery being raised by ghosts (and a vampire).

Considering that this is a children's book, the opening chapter is very dark indeed with The Man Jack  proving to be a really quite scary villain as he creeps through the house and viciously murders Bod's entire family.  

Luckily for Bod, he's chosen that day to toddle unseen from the house and up the road to the deserted (by humans) graveyard. After a confrontation and a plea on his behalf, the decision is taken by the ghosts to grant young Bod the freedom of the graveyard and raise him to adulthood.

Like the Jungle Book, this book takes the form of a series of interlinked short stories.  The longest story joins them together and uses plot elements from all the preceding tales to give a more than satisfying conclusion to one of the overarching plots.  I found the final chapter to be really quite moving.  

As usual for Neil Gaiman, the prose is excellent.  He achieves a fairy tale feeling which is deceptively charming, given the darkness of the subject matter.  Bod is a brilliant creation and watching him grow and mature is a lovely experience. The supporting cast are all uniformly engaging, some mysterious, some funny, some scary.   The illustrations are rather good as well.

I was going to power through this book but found myself slowing down to savour it instead.  As children's books go this has plenty to engage the more mature reader too. 

Buy it for your kids if you must, but don't feel ashamed of reading it for yourself too.  You won't regret it.

Number 9 The Deep Woods - Tim Pratt

My latest cheat read - a fun little YA novella that I picked up cheap on the PS website.  As usual from PS it's a good looking book. This one's even signed and limited to 100 copies which is always nice.

The story is nothing really original to be honest.  A boy obsessed with a fanatasy roleplaying game called Wild Hunt Online accidentally wanders into a "real life" fairyland when he runs into a boy called Silas whe's been trapped there for a century.There's a nice reveal about the nature of the land he's trapped in and the characters are well drawn and sympathetic. I wasn't 100% sold on the very end of the book - possibly a touch too sentimental - but this is a YA book and I'm not really the target audience I suppose.

After the convoluted language of Uncle Tom's Cabin, it was good to read something written in modern day English without all the moralising. This is a quick and easy read that kept me entertained for the 123 pages.  Reccommended as a timefiller for adults, younger readers will probably love it a lot more than I did. 

6.5 maybe 7/10 for me. 

Available through PS Publishing.