The same lack of power appeared during the ongoing series: he couldn’t give any ideas, didn’t had any influence, and even if he made suggestions they never manifested in the comics. He had suggestions and ideas for Arcana - but when he tried to give them it was “too late” and no modification could be done. But in truth, as he latter revealed, he had no actual role in the creation of these comics. You will see his name printed in the Arcana Annual and in the first half of the Books of Magic (volume 2) comics, under “creative consultant”. But hey - you might wonder “What about Neil Gaiman? He created the original mini-series, he wrote parts of The Children’s Crusade, what was his part in this new series?”. Hell, the world of “The Books of Magic” deserves its own guide. It was so big it spawned its own spin-offs. “The Books of Faerie”, “The Names of Magic”, “Hunter: The Age of Magic”. Well “The Books of Magic” was EVEN more popular. ![]() I said “The Dreaming” was popular - I said “Lucifer” was even more popular. ![]() (I insist on the difference between writers, because some people felt and discussed the change of narration and concerns between Rieber’s work and Gross’ work). Yep, the exact same number of issues The Sandman and Lucifer had. It however kept going: it was decided that the series’ artist, Peter Gross, who was following Timothy’s adventures since the Arcana, would take on writing for the rest of the series - and he brought the series up to its last and final issue, issue 75. You see, he had grown quite a distate and dislike of Timothy as a character, and he didn’t want to work on this series anymore. Rieber worked on “The Books of Magic” series until 1997 - at which point he decided to quit. ![]() Starting in 1994, this second Books of Magic series was done by John Ney Rieber, who was the one tasked with creating the “Arcana” story - which is why the Arcana story is a sort of prequel/introduction to this series. how did we get here?”.Īnd it got big and popular enough for “The Books of Magic” to being released and published as its own, ongoing series developping the events described previously. Instead (probably more due to editorial rushing and a need to get the Big Threat of the first arc in the picture by the end of #2 to appease convention in modern comic storytelling, than the intentions of the writer), the political commentary and character progressions end up a bit hurried and I’m left with a feeling of “Yes logically I get how we got here, but like. This series could have absolutely benefited from what the original Dreaming had - short story arcs focusing on specific parts of or people in the Dreaming that slowly, slowly come together to form a larger whole - and just slowed down the breakdown of Lucien and whatever they were going for with Merv enough that we get a good sense of where it comes from. In some cases the old characters are spot on, and the new characters are all fantastic, but something about the way Merv and Lucien develop in the first few issues feels a little forced. The issues with the start of this series are a lot more complicated than just “bad writer” or “incorrect characterisation”.
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