Magic #4

Magic #4

BOOM! Studios 2021

Written by Jed MacKay

Illustrated by IGT Guara

Coloured by Arianna Consonni

Lettered by Ed Dukeshire

What secrets does Lazav keep?

Having discovered Duskmantle, Kaya, Vraska, and Ral will meet with the secretive Guildmaster of the Dimir, who may be the key to unraveling the mystery of the assassination attempts. Meanwhile, the plot against the trio is beginning to turn Ravnica itself against them…

There is something about this issue that really causes me to question what it is we’re seeing. Okay there’s the Firemind and there’s Lazav and of course those supposedly taking care of their friend Beleren. There are so many different factions at play here it’s hard to tell who is lying, who is telling the truth and who is trying to manipulate them all. It doesn’t help much that Jed is writing the heck out of this and for every moment you think you might have an answer he comes along says “hold my beer” and suddenly you don’t know who or what to believe again. It is part of what makes this so gosh darn good too and if anyone out there thinks that these types of stories aren’t for them than they are missing out on a masterclass of storytelling that’s going on within these pages.

I love the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter is magnificently rendered. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of the story and deepening the mystery that captures the readers mind and imagination.

I’m really rather enjoying the way that this is being structured and how the layers within the story continue to grow, evolve and strengthen as well newly emerge depending on the avenues explored or those that open up. The layers contain so much of what we see and whether or not they work with the main arc or simply swirl around it they add depth and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is extremely well achieved.

The interiors here are delightful. I like how we see backgrounds being utilised throughout and more so through the dream sequences as they enhance the moments and how they work within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the book. The linework we see nicely laid down and how the varying weights are utilised to create the detail work is great to see. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a very talented eye for storytelling. The creativity and imagination that we see is nice but i’d still like to see some tighter meaner looking characters.

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I am really enjoying the heck out of this series so far. The writing has been exceptional and the characterisation has really allowed us to get to know more about these three Planeswalkers. The interiors are pretty solid comic book style. Yet it really is the writing and the story that steal the show here and show that it doesn’t matter the genre because when you have diverse and interesting characters, a mystery to be solved and an atmosphere where no one trusts the other there are bound to be the kind of intriguing moments that define the storytelling. Welcome my friends to the show that never ends where no one and nothing is what it seems and where some are puppets and others puppet masters.