Strange Academy # 1 Review
Here’s my Strange Academy # 1 review for the book written by Skottie Young with art by Humberto Ramos! It’s out now and available at your LCS! For us here in the Philippines, its Comic Odyssey!
It’s been awhile since Marvel did a “School” book with fresh new characters or characters with ties to specific big name characters. Top of my head, the most memorable would be the kids of Avengers Academy; and although most of those characters died in one form or another, the main book written by Christos Gage years ago served to be an awesome time.
The X-Men had a similar concept and thankfully they didn’t die. Some were just forgotten though like Idie aka Oya and Kid Apocalypse aka Genesis. Still we could probably assume that they are still alive.
And along comes Strange Academy which is pretty much a school for magic founded by Doctor Strange himself with headmaster being Brother Voodoo aka Jericho Drumm. And you know what? I actually loved Strange Academy # 1. It’s a simple introduce your players story kicking up plot point after plot point and even hinting at possible deaths and status quo changes.
Now we’re not going to spoil the whole story but here are bullet points that can hopefully make you pick up the book and help keep the title running for as long as possible.
Humberto Ramos’ art is always good. I liked how it complements the weird and wacky world that they are introducing here in this book.
The story flow works extremely well with this issue serving as a way to introduce our “avatar” in this world, Edith Bright, a teenager who has enough power in her to push back death. I feel like her powers would be something that would a story arc in the near future.
The other students also have their own personality and uniqueness into them. Like those two Asgardian boys and even Dormammu’s teenage son who seems rather chill in this dimension.
I like how they also wrote the admin here in the book. Rather than being in your face about things, they are written in such a way that they give these kids breathing space with what they do. By being absent in most of the book, readers come to rely on the dialogue of these new characters to push the story forward. Even Doctor Strange is visibly absent in the story until the point where we really need him to come out.
I’ve already written about it before but this is actually a good book with a fair amount of promising characters. I honestly want to read more about these guys, want to see who becomes an item, which of them would die and which of these students will be dealing with their baggage within the school grounds.
Strange Academy # 1 Verdict
10/10
I will be adding this title to my pull list and one of the titles I will look forward to read every month as well. So what are you waiting for, go and pick up Strange Academy today!
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