A Mischief of Magpies #1 Review: Simon Spurrier & Matías Bergara Deliver Stunning Fantasy

There are comics that invite you into another world, and then there are comics that grab you by the hoodie, toss you through the emotional washing machine, and drop you into a strange city-ship full of bird chaos, sea monsters, magic, anxiety, and teenage heartbreak. A Mischief of Magpies #1 from DSTLRY is absolutely the second kind, and oh baby, this one does not tiptoe into the weird. It cannonballs straight into the deep end wearing mismatched socks and yelling “GO EVER ON!” like it means business.

Simon Spurrier and Matías Bergara reunite with the kind of creative electricity that makes a comic feel less like a product and more like a fever dream someone somehow managed to staple together. This first issue follows Marinus Picknett, a troubled teenager dealing with bullying, isolation, therapy, family stress, and the terrifying sickness of his little sister Milly. Already, that’s a lot of emotional weight for one young person to carry. But instead of presenting Marinus as some polished YA hero waiting for his destiny cape, Spurrier writes him as messy, wounded, sarcastic, self-aware, awkward, angry, and painfully human. He feels like a real kid trying to survive a world that keeps poking bruises he didn’t ask for. And then the comic does what great fantasy does best: it makes the imaginary world feel like an emotional truth.

The city-ship Marinus is transported to is one of those big comic book ideas that makes your brain sit up straight. This is not just “kid enters fantasy realm.” Nah, that would be too easy. This is a strange, towering, ocean-sailing civilization built with mystery, ritual, absurdity, danger, and the kind of visual invention that makes you stop mid-page and go, “Okay, hold up, I need to stare at this panel like it owes me money.” The world is beautiful, but not safe. It is welcoming, but suspicious. It gives Marinus something he desperately needs: attention, importance, purpose. That’s where the book gets sneaky in the best way. This fantasy realm isn’t just escapism. It is temptation.

That’s the secret sauce here. A Mischief of Magpies #1 understands that fantasy worlds don’t just pull us away from reality because they are magical. They pull us away because sometimes reality is too loud, too cruel, too heavy, too unfair, and the idea of being needed somewhere else can feel like oxygen. Marinus is not just chasing adventure. He is chasing the feeling of being seen. That makes this comic hit harder than expected. WEPA, that’s the emotional jab-cross combo right there.

Spurrier’s writing is sharp, poetic, strange, and bruisingly honest. He captures the teenage voice without turning it into parody. Marinus’ narration has that perfect blend of embarrassment, anger, humor, denial, and “please don’t look at me, but also please notice I exist.” His diary-style narration gives the whole issue a personal pulse, like we are reading something we were not supposed to find. It also allows the book to shift between school drama, family tragedy, mythic weirdness, and surreal comedy without falling apart. That is not easy. In the wrong hands, this could become tonal soup. Here, it becomes a storm.

Matías Bergara’s art? Come on now. This book is gorgeous in that unhinged, painterly, dream-bent way where every page feels alive and unstable. Bergara doesn’t just draw a fantasy world; he lets it breathe, wobble, glow, rot, sing, and occasionally menace you from the corner of the page. The early diary and school sequences have an intimate, scrapbook-like quality, almost like fragments of memory taped together by a kid who doesn’t know what to do with his own thoughts. Then, once the story moves into the city-ship and the endless ocean, the scale opens up beautifully. Suddenly we get impossible architecture, bizarre citizens, streaks of color, monstrous shadows, jagged movement, and those gloriously chaotic magpies flapping around like tiny feathered agents of narrative mayhem.

The color work by Bergara and Kike J. Díaz deserves serious love too. The palette knows when to feel soft and wounded, when to go sickly and strange, and when to explode into fantasy spectacle. The contrast between Marinus’ grey emotional reality and the wild colors of the other world is not just pretty—it is storytelling. You can feel why he wants to go back. You can feel why returning home hurts. The colors become part of the psychology.

Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s lettering is doing major heavy lifting here as well. This is a book where voices matter. Diary text, bird chatter, strange machine language, emotional narration, and fantastical dialogue all need their own rhythm, and the lettering guides us through that chaos without flattening it. The magpies especially feel alive because the lettering lets them be frantic, obnoxious, funny, and weirdly lovable. Lettering like this doesn’t just “put words on the page.” It performs. It conducts the orchestra while the violins are on fire and the drummer is a bird.

What makes this debut sing is that it refuses to be only one thing. It is a portal fantasy, yes. It is a coming-of-age story, absolutely. It is funny, but not fluffy. It is sad, but not miserable. It has wonder, but that wonder has teeth. There are shades of classic children’s fantasy here, but filtered through anxiety, grief, social media cruelty, therapy-speak, family collapse, and the modern ache of being a teenager who feels invisible until the wrong people notice him. That mix gives the book its identity. It has whimsy, but it is not lightweight. It has darkness, but it is not trying to be edgy just for the sake of wearing a leather jacket in July.

Marinus’ emotional journey is the engine. The fantasy world may be filled with anarchic magpies, mysterious rulers, strange technology, and deep-sea nightmare energy, but the real question is much more intimate: what happens when a hurting kid finds a place that rewards him for disappearing from the life that needs him most? That is the hook that makes this issue stick. Because yes, adventure feels good. Purpose feels good. Applause feels good. But the issue keeps poking at something deeper and more uncomfortable: pride is powerful, but it may not be the same thing as healing.

And that ending? No spoilers beyond the vibe, but it lands with the emotional weight of a door closing somewhere in your chest. The book leaves you with mystery, sadness, and that dangerous fantasy promise that things will continue. “Go ever on” is more than a phrase here. It feels like a spell, a coping mechanism, and maybe a warning.

DSTLRY continues to give creators room to swing big, and A Mischief of Magpies #1 swings like it has something to prove. This is the kind of first issue that rewards slow reading. Don’t rush it. Let the pages breathe. Let the weirdness hit you. Let the emotional undercurrent sneak up and steal your lunch money. Spurrier and Bergara have cooked up something strange, heartfelt, visually dazzling, and quietly devastating. It is a fantasy adventure for anyone who has ever wanted to escape, be seen, be chosen, be important, or just find one place in the universe where the noise finally stops.

A Mischief of Magpies #1 is imaginative, heartfelt, oddball, and emotionally sharp. It is a beautiful reminder that sometimes the wildest worlds in comics are not built to help us run away from reality. Sometimes they exist to show us what we are really running from.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4/5

Writer: Simon Spurrier
Artist: Matías Bergara
Colorists: Matías Bergara & Kike J. Díaz
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Editor: Eric Harburn
Graphic Designer: Emma Price
Publisher: DSTLRY Media

FOC:
05/25/2026

In Shops:
July 15, 2026

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