Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Charmed Season 9 Issue 4 'Mortal Enemies' Review


Check me out getting to the latest issue of Charmed without months of delay. Check out Charmed putting out on a now regular schedule it's so close to being a monthly book now it's not even funny! Check out the amazing new art that is a nice blend of comic book art and the likenesses of the cast instead of looking like the usual kind of umm semi-porn posed panels we had been getting! Check out my inability to let this joke go even though I’ve clearly run out of thinks to say ‘check it out.’

Seriously though you have no idea how happy I am that this book got back on track not only with it now actually being monthly but the art as well. The likenesses are amazing; the new artist really knows how to capture Holly Marie, Rose and Alyssa. It’s not without its faults though; but for the record they really aren’t that bad. The fight scene between Piper and her real estate agent did get a little ‘oh hey look at my breasts’ but it’s not so obvious that it takes away from everything else. Maybe I just noticed it more because of how I felt about the art on the previous issues.

I don’t know it it was the improvement in the art or that they had more time than usual to work on this issue while there was the hold out with the last artist but in the end who cares the writing also really stepped up it’s game here. This is the first time since 9.01 that it actually felt like I was watching an episode of Charmed, not because of uniqueness of certain plot points or referencing history but because of the overall feel of everything. Piper struggling with her life, the utter psychological horror that is expressed between Paige and Henry when The Source’s spell makes Henry try to kill Paige – that right there was pretty big and something that would have been done really well on the show playing off the fact that Henry and Paige based their lives off of the things they had seen when they were both in the foster care system and all the abuse cases Paige must have seen when she was a social worker.

We do get a few new things here when Hogan uses his discord power (that has now been augmented by The Source), we see Paige use her new orb shield in an interesting way to create a door stop to keep the now magically controlled innocents from getting into the attic, we also see an odd new power of Piper’s. She tries to either freeze or blow up The Source but instead she melts the ground he’s standing on. We also learn that Piper no longer has P3, but it’s not clear if she closed the club – one would assume because of the poor economy, or if she sold it, or why she no longer owns the actually property.

My only real complaint has to do with the whole ‘rage’ spell that The Source and Hogan cast – it the plan is to eliminate the Charmed Ones and the spell doesn’t work on magical beings this would have been a perfect time for a quick cut scene to Darryl and his family attacking Billie since it would stand to reason that Billie is a magical ally of the sisters it would make sense to cut off any magical help lines that they might have. And okay yeah, this is partly me digging my heels in and insisting they find a way to get Adult Chris, Billie and Prue all in the comics for some reason or another.

Rating: A+

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