Mike Costa

Summary: Terry Ward is a magician - card tricks, illusions, sleight-of-hand, he's mastered it all. But when he finds himself in a world where magic is real and used to power even the most basic technology, all of his tricks avail him little when it comes to getting him home. When a young boy names Ethan crosses his path, Terry begins to teach him some of the basics of stage magic. But in doing so, he risks revealing his existence to those in power, who can wield real - and terrible - magic show more against him in pursuit of his secrets.

Review: I thought this was a great idea for a story - a stage magician trapped in a world where magic was real. If magic is what powers your cars and your computers, how would you react to a disappearing rabbit, or a basic card trick? So, I was on board from the beginning, but where this book really got me hooked, but good, was that it did a card trick right on the pages. Terry asks his marks to pick a card, any card, so of course I played along. And it worked! The magician - who is nothing more than ink on paper - read my mind! Once you know how it's done, it's simple, but the amazing thing is not the trick, but the fact that Costa et al. actually gave me that half-second of amazed "How did they do that?!?" shock. It totally sold me; regardless of how the rest of the story panned out, I would have been a happy girl.

Luckily, the rest of the story is also quite interesting. There are other "play at home" illusions scattered throughout, none with as much punch as that first one, but it definitely made reading a more interactive experience. (There's also an extended authors' note at the back that discusses the history behind most of the stage magic stuff, which was interesting.) The story itself plays out in some neat ways, although the villain reminded me a little too much of Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons for me to take him entirely seriously. Otherwise, the art reminded me quite a lot of Y: The Last Man: clean lines and a fair amount of detail but not cartoony-looking figures or an over-reliance on inked shading. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Definitely recommended to anyone who likes fantasy, magic, and graphic novels. This is a relatively recent release, but I can think of so many people that would love it, and it's a shame it's not better known. show less

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

Most, though not all, of the eight stories collected in this volume are codas to the main saga of All Hail Megatron, moving the pieces into position for what comes next in the ongoing series written by Mike Costa (of which I have only read the first volume). The eight stories are by seven different writers and seven different artists, many of them old IDW standbys like Simon Furman and Nick Roche.

A few promised something show more really interesting to come, like "Uneasy Lies the Head." Starscream, following the events of volume 2 of All Hail Megatron, is now the leader of the Decepticons. Yet with the Decepticons sent packing from Earth, he can only lead them into failure, and the lesson he learned in All Hail Megatron was that he didn't deserve to be leader except if he took power by force; that is the Decepticon philosophy. So what is he to do? He uses the fact that he possesses the Autobot Matrix of Leadership to rally everyone to his side while Megatron recuperates... but outside of that he has no idea.

Some are clearly doing set-up work, like "The Man of Steel," where Spike Witwicky is put in charge of a Transformers-hunting unit and given more of a personal reason to hate the Transformers, when he's brutally injured by Ravage. (I'm not sure why this was needed, given that the Transformers killed billions in All Hail Megatron, but I guess that wasn't personal enough.)

Some didn't do much for me, like "Old Ways," where Ironhide wants to retire but doesn't. I can't tell Ironhide apart from all the other robots still, and Figueroa's redesigns make everyone look hella creepy. Some draw on earlier continuity that I didn't know anything about, like "Rebirth," about what Galvatron is doing in space or something. Or there's "Replay," which exists only to retcon Devastation so that Sunstreaker's actions in All Hail Megatron seem more justified.

It was with the stories "Everything in Its Right Place" and "Lost & Found" that the IDW continuity began to click into place for me, where I began to be able to see how these characters moved from story to story and changed and developed. In "Everything in Its Right Place," Autobot scientist Perceptor joins Kup's team to monitor him, since Kup has gone insane but cannot spared, and Perceptor's cure requires constant monitoring. From there, Perceptor appears in the Drift story in volume 3 of All Hail Megatron, where he's badly injured. Then he appears back in this volume, in "Lost & Found," where he decides to upgrade himself to be more of a fighter than a scientist. "Lost & Found" leads directly into volume 1 of All Hail Megatron, where Kup's team crashlands on Cybertron, and the Autobots already on Cybertron are flabbergasted by what a badass sharpshooter Perceptor is now. And Perceptor will go on to play a key role in the excellent Last Stand of the Wreckers. It's tangled, obviously, but once I decoded that tangle with the help of the Transformers wiki, I was impressed, and the massive ongoing story of the IDW Transformers tales began to come into focus.

The Transformers by IDW: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence » show less

Much, much better than volume one. There's some depth to it this time around, but I felt the overload of gods and human characters was a bit too much to handle. Maybe they should focus on fewer characters.

I really like this book, yet I don't know why. The resurrection of Ironhide is poorly hand-waved away, but this is simply a beautifully illustrated book. Coller's pencils are really clean and cinemati, yet I really think the star of the book is Lafuente's colours. Seriously, this is just an amazingly coloured series. The next time someone laments about the nostalgic days of four colours, give them this book and tell them to shut up.