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A review by filipmagnus
Doctor Strange, Vol. 2: The Last Days of Magic by Jason Aaron
2.0
This wonderous, ponderous review was originally published over at The Grimoire Reliquary.
I’ve always enjoyed Jason Aaron’s work. He’s a talented scribe and his Thor runs are some of my favourite Marvel works in the past decade–despite not having read that work’s conclusion in the face of War of the Realms. Catching up on his Doctor Strange run seemed a no-brainer after I spied a somewhat mangled copy of The Last Days of Magic at my local library. Since I never say no to a mangled copy of anything, I checked it out immediately, expecting nothing less than moderate amounts of entertainment.
If only it were so.
There is fun to be had, certainly, but it comes in the weirdest moments: Scarlet Witch with a shotgun (she is a mutant, and a mystic, but surely her magic operates by different rules than Stephen’s?), a creepy Lovecraftian agony monster that Stephen and Wang have been keeping in the dungeon; how quickly my excitement turned to bitter, bitter disappointment, the further I read into this.
I do not like Strange’s voice. That’s wholly subjective, a matter of preference–but I’ve grown fond of a wiser, more experienced Master of the Mystic Arts.
I do not like magic here. It’s boring and not magical, and I don’t care enough to get why mutants are affected by the lack of it, too.
I don’t like the art much, either. Chris Bachalo’s art is a massive hit or miss for me. Perhaps as long as a decade back he did a tremendous run on one of the flagship X-titles at the time (I want to say…X-Men Legacy?), which appealed to me; here, I am often lost and struggling to piece together what is going on. A lot of it has to do with colouring, I think–issues 6-9 are a clusterfuck but whoever coloured issue 10 gets Fil’s No-Prize of the Month.
I borrowed this one from the library; when I returned it, they had the third volume…I have shackled myself to this Strange, Strange man and freedom is little more than a delirious hope at the farthest edges of my mind.
Disappointing. If you see a ruffled copy at *your* local library, know that it is a trap.
But do support your libraries, they need it.
And here’s a terrible joke I came up with, to celebrate this comic book:
A wizard and a scientist dude walk into a bar.
Wanna see a magic trick, asks the wizard.
Haha, wizzerd go brrr, says the Empirikul scientist guy. Then he bashes the wizard’s brains in.
I have a YouTube channel where I talk about books an' stuff: https://www.youtube.com/c/FilipMagnus/videos
I’ve always enjoyed Jason Aaron’s work. He’s a talented scribe and his Thor runs are some of my favourite Marvel works in the past decade–despite not having read that work’s conclusion in the face of War of the Realms. Catching up on his Doctor Strange run seemed a no-brainer after I spied a somewhat mangled copy of The Last Days of Magic at my local library. Since I never say no to a mangled copy of anything, I checked it out immediately, expecting nothing less than moderate amounts of entertainment.
If only it were so.
There is fun to be had, certainly, but it comes in the weirdest moments: Scarlet Witch with a shotgun (she is a mutant, and a mystic, but surely her magic operates by different rules than Stephen’s?), a creepy Lovecraftian agony monster that Stephen and Wang have been keeping in the dungeon; how quickly my excitement turned to bitter, bitter disappointment, the further I read into this.
I do not like Strange’s voice. That’s wholly subjective, a matter of preference–but I’ve grown fond of a wiser, more experienced Master of the Mystic Arts.
I do not like magic here. It’s boring and not magical, and I don’t care enough to get why mutants are affected by the lack of it, too.
I don’t like the art much, either. Chris Bachalo’s art is a massive hit or miss for me. Perhaps as long as a decade back he did a tremendous run on one of the flagship X-titles at the time (I want to say…X-Men Legacy?), which appealed to me; here, I am often lost and struggling to piece together what is going on. A lot of it has to do with colouring, I think–issues 6-9 are a clusterfuck but whoever coloured issue 10 gets Fil’s No-Prize of the Month.
I borrowed this one from the library; when I returned it, they had the third volume…I have shackled myself to this Strange, Strange man and freedom is little more than a delirious hope at the farthest edges of my mind.
Disappointing. If you see a ruffled copy at *your* local library, know that it is a trap.
But do support your libraries, they need it.
And here’s a terrible joke I came up with, to celebrate this comic book:
A wizard and a scientist dude walk into a bar.
Wanna see a magic trick, asks the wizard.
Haha, wizzerd go brrr, says the Empirikul scientist guy. Then he bashes the wizard’s brains in.
I have a YouTube channel where I talk about books an' stuff: https://www.youtube.com/c/FilipMagnus/videos