Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Comics Review: WIZARDS OF MICKEY #4 (Boom! Kids, April 2010)

Our magic-mongering heroes open this issue by recovering the stolen dragon's egg from "The Iron Sorcerers." In so doing, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy demonstrate yet again that they've got plenty of old-fashioned ingenuity to complement their improving magical skills; they defeat the menacing "Warlock Robot" by attacking the fused metal creature's psychological Achilles' heel (and, yes, there really is one). Then, it's off to Castle Blackburg (and not a Hokie Bird in sight) for a planned rematch with the Tapestry Sorcerers, aka Team Tapestry. (Waitasec -- what about the much-stressed, relentlessly-repeated ground rule that "a team is eliminated from the sorcery tournament when it loses its Diamagic"? Didn't Team Tapestry lose its Stone Diamagic to Wizards of Mickey in that earlier match? Seems to me that the writers have lost the "thread" of their carefully-constructed premise. And that's my only weaving-related joke, I promise.) Black Pete and The Beagle Brothers finally reappear, this time running a "monster-hunting" scam and intending to add the people of Blackburg to their list of "connees." Pete evinces a complete lack of interest in the ongoing tournament; in the absence of The Phantom Blot's guiding hand, could he and The Beagles be "evolving" into a medieval version of their more mundanely crooked future selves? And... could a real monster actually be following Wizards of Mickey? If the plot gets any thicker, it will congeal, but WIZARDS continues to widen its lead over the flagging HERO SQUAD insofar as consistently high quality goes.

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