A Mischief of Magpies #1: Coping Through Escapism

A Mischief of Magpies #1 is a wild psychedelic trip only the most illegal drugs could induce. Its 27 pages are full of Shakespearean birds, the aforementioned magpies, a wandering city, and imaginative delusions that spike at our protagonist’s most depressed.

Simon Spurrier’s characters are witty with that kind of operatic cadence to their dialogue that you don’t see often in comic books or any popular media for that matter. Marinus Picknett, or Mar for short, Spurrier’s protagonist, is characterized by what the story thrusts upon him rather than any defining character traits. It’s not that Mar is poorly written but that he’s been overwritten by the world he inhabits. A once imaginative character whose color has been stolen from them. We see this in the storyline itself.

Mar is deeply troubled by so many things it’d be best to organize them with bullet points. To name a few, a sick younger sister; parents going through the worst of it who don’t have time for him; and the ye olde classic… bullies. As the reader, we see Mar go through years of growth and implied subtextual character development. His school assignments are shown to us as is his psychiatrist-prescribed journal, the former in red and the latter in green.

To cope with this world of prescribed medications and depressing shades, Mar is thrust into an adventure that carefully treads the line between a delusion he’s concocted to escape the gray of his reality and a fantasy city in need of a hero to slay the lovecraftian king that terrorizes the sea. The reader is never quite sure which is “real” in the sense of the story, and that seems to be exactly what Spurrier is going for here.

We are pulled out of this delusion or fantasy time and time again before being thrust back in just as Mar’s life takes yet another downward turn. Just as he starts to become overburdened by things mostly beyond his control, he is summoned back to the dream for the next part of his adventure. That kind of loop drives the storyline right through its highs and lows.

Despite the endless mystery and the constant questioning, the storyline is paced fluidly, although a bit heavier at some points than others. There is a breathless quality to the writing, even as new ideas are introduced quickly and without much fanfare beyond the illusory artwork that draws the reader in deeply and subtly.

The art is lush and easy to get lost in. There is nothing orthodox or simple about Matías Bergara’s artwork, which is supported by Kike J. Diaz’s vibrant colors and Hassan Ostmane-Elhaou’s immersive lettering. Not a single page uses anything resembling a standard comic book layout. The panels blend into each other, and the arrangement is like that of a painting you’d see on display at a local gallery. Bergara’s line art is heavy with large objects near-constantly in the foreground and an impressive command of visual distance that makes Mar’s strange reality feel surreal and exciting in that all too terrifying way we sometimes experience in our dreams.