Radiant Comics

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got nine new comics:

Clone – 6

Dark Horse Presents – 23

East of West – 2

Jupiter’s Legacy – 1

Manhattan Projects – 11

The Massive – 11

Mind MGMT – 10

Rachel Rising – 16

Witch Doctor: Malpractice – 6

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

”Witch Doctor: Mal Practice” Issues 1-6 by Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner

This is the second “Witch Doctor” mini-series. I meant to buy the first one but missed out on it. I’m sorry that I did because I really like this series. “Witch Doctor” is the story of a magic user who is also a doctor of magic based diseases. He has a big blond guy as an assistant and a girl who can turn into a monster as an ally. He’ll need them both because in this series he goes up against an evil magician who gave him a fatal magic-borne parasitic disease.

I really like the world of magic that they create here. Besides classic Dr. Strange comics I’ve never liked many comic books that have magic as their basis. I find magic in most stories to be a let down. Rarely does magic pretend to make any kind of sense in most comic book stories and it’s just there to move the plot along. They might as well be fighting with guns since spells are treated pretty much the same in most stories. In “Witch Doctor” I totally buy into the magic they’ve created. It seems biology based and there are all sorts of creepy critters roaming around these comics. Here there is a logic to the way magic and magic creatures work that can be figured out by the characters just like the rest of the regular world. I like that.

The imaginative artwork by Ketner helps sell the world of magic too. He’s good at drawing all sorts of weird creatures that might be insect-, plant-, or fish-like. He has a style that’s a bit reminiscent of Bernie Wrightson’s work. It’s not really close to Wrightson’s work but there are a lot of blacks and some lush ink work. Maybe there’s some Gene Colan thrown in there too. The color by Andy Troy plays up the lushness of the world that’s created in a really nice way.

I also like the pacing of the story. There is always a lot of stuff happening. It all moves along at a good clip but the story is not “Decompressed”. There are also a ton of characters besides the main three. There is more stuff going on in a single issue that I’ve seen in three issues of other comics. All in all I’d have to say they do an excellent job creating a fun world populated by all sorts of characters and creatures. Lots of imagination. Give it a read.