Books of Magic #4 (1991)
by Neil Gaiman & Paul Johnson
The controversies regarding the writer will not be discussed.
Let’s just stick to the Legion connections, provided that I understand what the heck is going on.
To make a looooooong story short, the part that interests us is that the bling magician Mister E is tanking young magician Tim Hunter to a trip to the future, to teach him about magic in the future.
Everything linked to the Legion is in two consecutive two-page spreads; I will talk about significant portions of the infodump, as the style of the illustrations doesn’t lend itself easily to my review style.
Explaining the future, Mister E brings up the fact that in the 30th century technology is SO advanced it might as well be magic to the regular person.
I have no idea what Mister E is talking about with “men breed with creatures worse than animals”… is he a xenophobe? Or is this related to something specific?
In any case, while I’m not the biggest fan of the illustrations, the wizards of Sorcerer’s World look VERY cool.
I’m more than a little lost in this series, especially since nobody is able to talk in a straightforward way. I guess it’s part of the genre, though, and it does fit Mister E.
We get a look at both some Legionnaires and some Fatal Five here, even though most of the latter are not a factor in the stories that are about to be referenced.
Saturn Girl looks great, but everyone else is kind of meh. Light Lass looks more like Black Widow to me.
The best of the bunch is Tharok. He looks so creepy!
The reason for bringing up the Legion… other than Paul Johnson wanting to draw something cool I guess… is to reference the Magic Wars.
The Magic Wars in a nutshell, everybody:
“What’s an Archmage?”
“Who knows?”
I didn’t understand that storyline enough to make a precise call whether this summary is correct, but I feel like it isn’t. Despite the direct reference to spiders creating webs in space.
The “female principle” is obviously Amethyst, who DID tie herself to the former Gemworld and died… but the Archmage wasn’t the “male principle” opposed to it, right?
I am pretty sure the fact that the Archmage was trapped by beings much older than the gods of Olympus is wrong, considering Sorcerer’s World was settled by people from Earth.
Also, while Sorcerer’s World was indeed destroyed… it didn’t destroy magic, so what is Mister E talking about here?
Also also, didn’t Amethyst die there? What’s the line about her surviving but dying later?
I am SO confused.
That’s the only Legion connection. I’m kind of disappointed there is no mention of the Time Trapper (unless I missed a metaphor or something), considering they visit the end of time… but they just meet with two of the Endless, Destiny and Death.
The latter sends Mister E back to the present day by making him take the way back home… ON FOOT.
Legion significance: uhm..
Silver Age-ness: well..
Does it stand the test of time? I mean…
This is WAY beyond my alley, I’m not even going to try giving it a proper review.
It’s neat to have this mystical side of the DC Universe reference the Legion, but unless you’re already into it… it’s for completionists only.
Especially if you were hoping this would make the Magic Wars more understandable… yeah this isn’t it.
Yeah, Mister E is being a xenophobe about human/alien relations there, it’s of a piece with his religious fanaticism.
I’m rather certain that the image you refer to as Light(ning) Lass looking like Black Widow is actually a badly-rendered White Witch. It’s a callback to the way she looked back in Adventure Comics, but dressed as a stereotypical Halloween witch (note the black triangle above her head, meant to look like a witch’s hat) and (anachronistically) with her Levitz-era antennae poking through the straight reddish hair.
I mean, how could you do the Legion in “The Books of Magic” without showing the White Witch? (The absence of Projectra and Mordru from the that spread is bad character selection. I get showing the founders, and Dream Girl makes sense, and maybe Tellus, but Element Lad? Night Girl, who is neither a Legionnaire nor magical?)
While the “miscegenation” line could just be Mister E’s general xenophobia, it could be referring to Colossal Boy’s marriage to Yera.
No way is the “male principle” as opposed to Amethyst the Archmage, for the reasons you’ve said. Perhaps it’s hinting at Mordru? That would make sense in the context of the Amethyst mini-series and the big Mordru story later in v4. As for Mr. E’s statement about the end of the Magic Wars, I’d say he placed the “amassed magic” beyond reach – i.e., what the sorcerers managed to concentrate in great amounts on Zerox – but wild magic still exists dispersed and diffuse, and competent sorcerers can still harness it but not quite as effectively.
I imagine the line about Amethyst surviving was because the Beirbaums mentioned something about planning to use her in a later Legion story. If I’m right about that, it’s a shame they didn’t make more use of the Legion writers in composing the two-page Legion spread.
And as I recall, there is indeed no Time Trapper in this issue, which makes sense, considering that this was written post-Glorithverse.
I did not think at the original White Witch look. It is indeed more similar to the hair style she used to have.