Writer John Ney Rieber and colorist Sherilyn Van Valkenberg live in Chapel Hill (cover artist Charles Vess lives in Virginia) and they are joined by penciller Gary Amaro and inker Peter Gross. The Books of Magic is a follow-up to a limited series of the same name written by Sandman writer Neil Gaiman. As Gaiman is one of the hottest (commercially and artistically) writers in comics, following his efforts was difficult. Fortunately, the creative staff has met the challenge ably.
The premise of The Books of Magic is that a boy named Tim Hunter is
announced to be the greatest magician that humanity has ever known, except
that he doesn't have any power, or at least any he can control. Tim is a
regular boy, with his own very realistic problems, but he is also a
magnet for weirdness and supernatural attention because of his potential
power. Tim is written with incredible sensitivity, both in his domestic
life in London and in the other worlds he travels in. The other characters
thatwe have met so far are very "real" as well, although it is too early in
the series (only three issues out) to know too much about them.
One of the great appeals of the book is that it is simply (if stylistically) rendered, allowing the emotional impact of the coloring and the storyline to have full play with different levels of your attention. It's hard to explain how incredibly effective the coloring is without explaining how pitiful most coloring in comics is. Usually colorists view the base color of the visual world as being "realistic" white light and then they vividly render the look of everything as gaudy and overblown as possible (we are talking about 90% superhero books after all.) Of course, the way things appear are strongly affected by the kind of light in their environment. And Van Valkenberg seems to take this visual truism into the pages, choosing whole sets of color schemes around the setting.
The Vertigo imprint of DC Comics is experiencing an identity crisis as it approaches the conclusion of its flagship title, Sandman. The Books of Magic stands poised to take a place at the top of the Vertigo heap when that time comes. Don't wait until it goes into reprints, jump right in. (Bob Boster)