Black Gate

So I picked up issue 7 of Mage this week and realized that I’d never gotten around to reviewing issue 6, so expect another review to follow this one very soon.

Issue 5 ended with Kevin and Joe spotting the Questing Beast. Upon seeing the pair, the Beast takes off. Kevin tells Joe that he’s got to follow it. Kevin thinks that the Questing Beast could show him the way to the Fisher King. Joe’s response is that he’s out of this whole hero/quest thing and then leaving.

When Kevin gets home, he finds Magda waiting up for him. What follows is an argument that touches on some things that I’ve been going on about in earlier reviews. We learn that Kevin hasn’t had a regular job since he was twenty-two years old and that he’s been relying on that magic debit card for most of his adulthood. No idea how that sort of thing generates enough money for them to afford houses without anyone asking where the money comes from … unless everyone just assumes that Kevin is a drug dealer. The fact that Kevin hasn’t really used his powers to help anyone in this volume of the series, only fending off monsters that have come looking for him, makes Magda seem less like a killjoy and more like a wise friend offering good advice. On top of that, we’ve seen that Joe’s given up adventuring with no ill effects, while Kirby’s dedication to adventuring eventually got him killed.

Meanwhile, the Umbra Sprite is testing the city’s resident handicapped population to see if any of them are the Fisher King in disguise. Of course, the “test” involves opening a handbag full of flying piranhas on them. Anyone whom the flying piranhas (OK, she calls them Sluagh Sidhe) DON’T eat is the Fisher King. Needless to say, this ends with a lot of bone piles and no Fisher King. While the plan of setting up shelters in order to look for the Fisher King makes sense, we understand as readers that he likely won’t be found in such a conventional, undramatic fashion, so these interludes are mostly excuses to show the various grisly acts that the Umbra Sprite and her Gracklethorns are willing to commit.

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Yeah, Kevin, it’s me. There was a two-month break between issues 4 and 5, but it wasn’t due to any sort of publishing mishap. Rather, Matt Wagner built these month-gaps into the series schedule from the beginning in order to give himself enough time to finish everything without any unexpected delays. He takes advantage of this gap by jumping the story ahead by thirteen months. Obviously, spoilers and fan theories ahead.

It opens with a five-page flashback set some time shortly after the end of the first series (Hero Discovered). Kevin Matchstick is tromping through a sewer with a full head of hair; a magic baseball bat; and the first World Mage, Mirth. We get hints of things to come (high top shoes, four star hotels, the departure of Mirth) and a nice splash page of an Ellen Trechend.

We then flash to the present. Kevin is trying to explain to his son that his life is filled with tragedy and serious mythic underpinnings. But Hugo just wants to hear stories about his dad fighting monsters. Meanwhile, Kevin’s wife is apparently a realtor now (even though she was a teacher four issues ago), looking pretty sharp in her red business suit. They also own a purple cat named Chloe. And they’re staying in a house that they can afford because … I seriously don’t know.

We’re on issue #5 and I still have no idea what Kevin Matchstick is supposed to have been doing for the last ten years. Has he seriously just been living off a magic ATM card while he’s been avoiding fighting monsters?

Anyway, he’s walking Hugo to a school bus, asking if he likes the neighborhood, then takes a detour to an ATM to grab some money and bitch at the absent mage. And it looks like he’s been lying low since his battle with the hell-queen last issue. Which means, I guess, that he left his family to protect them, fought a monster, figured out that abandoning his family in times of trouble was dumb, then returned home.

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