Written By: Kat Howard
Drawn By: Tom Fowler
Colors By: Jordan Boyd
Letters By: Todd Klein
Cover By: Kai Carpenter
Edited By: Molly Mahan
Associate Editor: Amedeo Turturro
Assistant Editor: Maggie Howell
Executive Editor: Mark Doyle
Cover Price: $3.99
On Sale Date: January 30, 2019
Delivering on the premise that Books of Magic is part of something "bigger", this time out, our young hero looks to be visiting that... place. You know, the place where half of this line hangs out.
Will this wind up being more interesting than Tim walking back and forth from his home to school? Let's find out!
It took us five months, but Books of Magic finally feels like a part of the Sandman Universe... and that's kind of the problem.
This issue removes Tim Hunter from his usual London-area trappings and (literally) drops him into the Dreaming... where, if you weren't also reading that title... you'd have absolutely no idea what to expect. You might not even have an idea what you're looking at. Hell, even for those of us reading the entire family of books, this is a tad bit on the confusing side.
In his time wandering the Dreaming, Tim runs into a character we'd only just met in the final pages of the first arc of the The Dreaming title... and appears to recognize it! This immediately made me feel like I was "missing something"... and ya know what, I just might be. I feel like this was supposed to be THE thing about this issue, but kind of fell flat for me.
As mentioned, if I wasn't already reading The Dreaming, I'd have absolutely no idea. I feel like it does the reader a great disservice making The Dreaming a "prerequisite" to understanding (and best enjoying) this book.
Without giving anything away, the ending blurb promises that our next issue will be the end of this story (and a sixth chapter that that...shocker!), and with so many things left uncertain at this point, and as uneven as progression has been thus far, I fear we might be in for an "info dump" of Lucifer #5 proportions! Which is to say, it will be a fine issue... but make me question why I even bothered reading the ones that proceeded it.
Art is still quite strong, especially in the opening pages.
Bits and Pieces:
Tim visits the Dreaming and has himself a time. Some interesting trappings, yet... I can't shake the feeling that something is missing.
7.0/10
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