BOOM! Studios bring forth The Magicians: Alice’s Story. It’s an original graphic novel in hardcover.
Alice’s Story is from writer Lev Grossman’s “Magician” series of books. But this version is brand new. It’s his original story, retold from the perspective of Alice, by Lev Grossman, written by Lilah Sturges. Pius Bak is the illustrator, with colour by Dan Jackson.
It’s Alice’s Story, quite literally. Alice, a young girl whose family has a history of being associated around magic, acts much like the female star of the recent Men In Black International, uncovering the entrance to a top secret magic school. Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy!
Naturally, when you slip into a magic school, with visions of fictional books of characters like Harry Potter and The Witch and the Wardrobe, and the land of Fillory, the reality of learning magic is a lot more sobering. It’s hard and dangerous work. It’s good to have friends, especially when you are a teenager.
Alice’s Story starts out much like many other stories of kids who attend magic schools. But it takes several fascinating turns, and that’s where it gets REALLY good. I was glued to my seat through this entire book, traveling with the characters through environments of pure evil, wondering who might (or might not) survive such trials and tribulations.
The dialogue is amazingly ‘teen like’. It’s raw, it’s crude, it’s edgy. The drawings are also eerily ‘just right’, and both entwine together to keep the reader enwrapped and in awkward rapture throughout. I can’t say enough good things about Alice’s Story, I highly highly recommend this one. It’s a textbook on graphic novel storytelling, thoroughly entertaining.
BOOM! Studios, (Archaia imprint) The Magicians: Alice’s Story OGN HC, $26.99 for 216 pages of content. Rated Teen + (language, sexual situations)
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