Lucid #2-4
Written and Created by: Michael McMillan
Illustrated by: Anna Wieszcyk
Lettered by: Shawn DePasquale
Archaia Comics

A black president getting assassinated? Looks a little close to home”¦

The world of Lucid is a world of magic: a modern world where a secret cabal of sorcerers who work for the United States government. A member of the Ambrosian Order, Matthew works to protect the government, including the president from other magical forces seek to assassinate him.

While pursuing assassins, battling demons, and neutralizing magical threats, Matthew and the rest of the Order are investigating an organization known as Artemis Megacorp and its connection to the Pendragon Prophecy, a foretelling of an age when everyone on the planet has magical power.

What sold me on Lucid was the intricate world of heroes and villains. There are secret orders of redneck mystics plotting the assassination of the president with magic bullets, giant corporations marketing technology to spread magic power, and washed up illusionists granted demonic powers by evil books. It’s an interesting world, with its private culture, politics, and rules. The magic of the comic is translated through symbols and words are unreadable in the comic but surrounded in black word bubbles. There effect is so spectacular I’m still having a hard time trying to figure out how magic can possibly stay a “secret” anymore.

The two flaws in the comic is its protagonist and its art. Matthew is about as interesting as a pile of laundry and in many ways is a prototype manga hero: The slim build, the shock of wild hair, the rebel without a cause attitude, the sarcastic attitude: it was nothing new, and therefore I had little interest in the character at all. The second flaw was the art; again, traditional manga art digitally enhanced and colored give the comic a very artificial feel.

On the whole the comic has an interesting concept, but it is executed poorly. The reliance on traditional manga style has diluted something that could have been a refreshing change in the “modern magic” genre.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Magic Wands.