Welcome to Ravnica, the home of magic. Kaya the Ghost-Assassin. Ral Zarek the Stormheart. Vraska the Queen of the Downtrodden. While each resides somewhere different in Ravnica, each will face down many foes due to a sudden attack in Magic #1. Who sent them is unknown but it’s part of the mystery of the multiverse of Magic.

I’m coming into Magic #1 as someone who knows absolutely zero about Magic: The Gathering but with any fantasy system, it’s about finding the components and putting them into terms you are familiar with. As someone who has played Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, I wasn’t completely confused with the goings-on of this first issue. It’s definitely a good setup issue. It provides an introduction to Ravnica and the various Planeswalkers and a couple of steps into what each is capable of. I’m not ready to go get a deck but the character work laid out within the pages is definitely enough to keep me entertained.

I’m fairly impressed with Magic #1. Jed McKay put together a simple enough story, which is great for someone like me who doesn’t understand MTG and yet there’s enough of the terms and abilities and such thrown about that it quickly brings you into the fold. McKay has put in a good amount of worldbuilding, action, and intrigue to really help make Magic #1 a quality fantasy comic.

Add Ig Guara’s art to the mix, I really like the art style used here. One of the great things about fantasy is the mixture of the strange and exotic and there’s definitely a lot of strange and exotic with this issue and having an artist up to the task of drawing all of this up is key. I know some of this has to come from the game itself but there’s a lot of cool character designs here. It’s a comic book with a lot of bright and vibrant colors. Arianna Consonni’s colors really add to the fantasy feeling and with Ed Dukeshire’s letters, I feel this issue of Magic is an adventurous first issue.

Magic #1 is very much in the vein of IDW’s Dungeons & Dragons comics, which I also really enjoy. We can never have enough fantasy-driven work in comics so if that’s what you like, take a chance with Magic.

Story: Jed MacKay Art: Ig Guara
Color: Arianna Consonni Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Story: 8.0 Art: 8.0 Overall: 8.0

BOOM! Studios provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

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