King: Mandrake The Magician #1 (of 4): Digital Exclusive Edition

by Roger Langridge

"It's time to put on a SHOW!" Welcome to the KING, full of IMPOSSIBLE TRICKERY and DEMONIC DESTRUCTION and HEARTBREAKING VILLAINY and WITCH DOCTORING and GLOBAL CATASTROPHE and SMIRKING SLEIGHT-OF-HAND and DAPPER DETERMINATION! Witness MAGICAL MYSTERY by Eisner-Award Winner ROGER LANGRIDGE (Thor the Mighty Avenger) and JEREMY TREECE (Marvel Zombies) with a connecting King cover by comic legend DARWYN COOKE! This issue features bonus content exclusively on comiXology!

Genres: Comics, Comic Book

37 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 18, 2014

About the author

Roger Langridge has been producing comics for over twenty years. Most recently, he has attracted critical attention for his work on the Harvey Award-winning Muppet Show Comic Book (Boom! Studios) and Thor: The Mighty Avenger (Marvel Comics); other works of note include Marvel's Fin Fang Four, Fantagraphics' Zoot! and Art d'Ecco (in collaboration with his brother Andrew), and the NCS, Ignatz, Eisner and Harvey Award-nominated comic book Fred the Clown. He currently lives in London with his wife Sylvie, their two children and a box of his own hair.

Reviews

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the classic Mandrake stories, and while this messes with that formula, it is fun seeing this attempt to turn him into King comics' Doctor Strange.
Nice art too.

[Linnea Gelland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt a bit odd that the same adventure had several different artists working on it, so that the characters changed looks throughout the story. But if you don't like one you might like another, so I guess it's good in some ways too.

The story itself was alright and it provided a bit of emotional character development for Mandrake, which was nice. There was a lot of dialogue focused on exposition, though, and that felt like it interrupted the flow. I also missed a good payoff of the real-magic-hurts-Mandrake-thing presented in the first chapter.

Alright, anyway.

[Nakul Shenoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm... This is a mixed feeling. Much as I am excited to see a new series of Mandrake, the initial drawings and storyline leaves me with mixed emotions. Perhaps I would improve the rating here when I have seen the next book in this series, but for now I do wish it was better.
Then again, it is Mandrake. So worth a read,