Magic of Myths is an interesting balance of action and adventure, mixed with a deeply personal back story for the main character. She’s a displaced hero given tasks in order to return to her home, having no other options she goes along with it. The thing is that while she’s on this physical journey of danger against a variety of creatures, she thinks about her life and how she got to where she is now. The story introduces us to Eve… and Eve. On one side of the page we can see Eve dressed in a glowing purple outfit and looking vaguely transparent and getting ready to fight some monster looking people. On the other side we see Eve dressed in normal clothing and teaching at a school. From there the story stays in the fantasy based world with our transparent, purple glowing Eve as she creates a light staff to kick some monster ass. After scaring off the monsters that she didn’t kill, a fairy looking creature arrives to talk to her. Eve calls him Tink, but he insists that it’s not his name. Strangely enough there is a metal collar around his neck with two chains coming out that are attached to a book that he’s carrying. Through their conversation we learn that this is not the first trip to this land for Eve and that she’s being put through her first advanced assessment. She must complete five tasks and retrieve a relevant artifact in order to return to her world.
From there Eve continues her tasks completing them one by one, but at the same time relating a part of the task to her own life experiences. That’s where the balance of action and character comes in as we learn a lot about Eve and her life. I wouldn’t say that she has the worst life ever, but it’s definitely not the best. From her upbringing to her dating life, it all ends poorly for her. As the story continues we discover that people are pulling Eve’s strings and other parties are aware of this and begin pulling them as well. We meet a sorcerer who isn’t happy about the appearance of a human in “his lands”, but even he doesn’t know who the ringmaster is.
What honestly saves this volume is Eve’s back story. Without that it would just be a displaced hero story to which it follows the formula closely. Eve’s character development is the key and really the driving force behind everything. The tasks aren’t that interesting or even that dangerous and a few of them felt like a B.S. video game level where you have no option other than failure to begin with. The dialog is very strong and again, Eve is a well-rounded fleshed out character, but the plot is a bit average. I wasn’t excited to see any of the challenges and the big reveals were just ho-hum because of it. I think the fact that Eve could only walk down one path from challenge to challenge really took the thrill of the adventure away.
The art is actually very cool. Eve is there, but she isn’t. I described her as transparent because she’s literally not in her body and yet can take damage in her current state. The line work is very thick and stylized. It has a storybook quality to it where there are just enough details to the art, but it doesn’t go overboard. It reminds me of something, but I can’t for the life of me think of what to compare it to. Some of the coloring was a bit blown out for me personally. Purple is a huge theme for the book, but at times there’s just too much on the page and making everything purple looking as if the hue on your TV was adjust to much in one direction. It doesn’t ruin the art or the book, but if it was toned back it would have had a better effect.
I’m interested in this story because of Eve and if it wants to keep my attention than it needs to amplify the other characters to make them interesting enough to be involved with her. She’s definitely the star of the show, but she shines so bright that no one else can touch her. If you’re into fantasy based stories with strong female leads then this is definitely for you.
Score: 3/5
Writer: Corey Brotherson Artist: Sergio Calvet Price: $14.00 in print or $2.25 digital (rough U.S. conversion) Website