Throughout it's 25-year existence, Vertigo Comics has produced some of the best comics of its time. I have enjoyed its long-running ongoing series, like Hellblazer, Lucifer & Y: The Last Man, and some short term projects like Brubaker & Phillips Scene of the Crime & Grant Morrison's minis WE3 & Seaguy. One of my favorite series through its several incarnations is The Books of Magic, which, like most of the great early Vertigo stuff grew from deep roots in the DC Universe. I am super excited about its imminent relaunch - as part of Vertigo Comics' 'Sandman Universe' imprint - and the opportunity to once again follow the adventures of Books' protagonist, the young mage, Timothy Hunter!
Tim Hunter, not to be confused with that other bespectacled master mage-in-training (let's call him 'He Who Must Not Be Named'), has had a fairly decent publishing history & there have been several attempts to relaunch the concept of the inexperience magician, prophesied to the the 'greatest of his age,' learning the ropes & growing into his role as master of the mystic arts - some of these attempts finding more success than others. As my favored topics here include uncollected comics, to celebrate the latest incarnation of Books, I thought I'd take a brief look at a trio of Books of Magic relaunches: the Peter Gross-written run of BoM from issues 51-75 of the 1st ongoing series, Hunter: The Age of Magic, and Books of Magick: Life During Wartime, almost all of which have yet to be reprinted.
