The Forbidden Book, Volume 1: Journeys into the Mystic

This is volume one of something for which volume two may or may not exist - I certainly hope it does. It's a short dozen B & W stories, commissionend, written, and illustrated just for this volume. The editor issued a wide-open request to each creator or team: something on the topic of magic. The result contains some ups and downs, as you may imagine, but names like Rick Veitch, Charles Vess, and Marv Wolfman ensure that parts of it will be very good. Vess gets the collection off to a strong start, doing what he does so very well. His piece retells a traditional English story, already retold by folk-rock Steeleye Span in the 1970s. Vess' line drawings combine delicacy, drama, and enough ambiguity to maintain a sense of mystery. Dennis Fujitake follows with words and art that bring Phil Foglio to mind, amusing and a bit off the wall. "The Parchment of Her Flesh" and "A Book Bound in Human Skin" share a writer and even part of their premise, but little else in artwork, mood, or resolution. Jeffrey Jones'"I Bled the Sea" is brief and enigmatic, but dense enough to pack a lot of story-telling into just two pages. Best of all, there's a lot more beyond these stories, and they're all worth coming back to. I'm coming back for more - I just hope there's a vol. two to come back to. //wiredweird