STORY BY:Â Ruben Romero, Bethany Romero, Roger Cabrera
ART BY:Â Eric Koda, Ross Hughes, Jaymes Reed
COVER BY:Â Eric Koda, Ross Hughes, Jaymes Reed
PUBLISHER:Â Think Alike Productions
The agency takes place in a world where magic is commonplace, and the I.A.M (International Agency of Magic) a S.H.I.E.L.D like organisation protects the world from rouge mages. A young magic attuned street kid has been taken into the agency for training yet set against the background of an attack by The Horus a group of evil mages, not everything is at it seems.
Writers Ruben & Bethany Romero alongside Roger Cabrera have accomplished a lot of world building in the last couple of issues of this book, yet they have allowed this to flow naturally instead of bogging the book down in a load of exposition. However, I found that a lot of the characters to be uninteresting and engaging with no real stand outs in the group it became hard to become invested in the story when none of the characters draw you in. The overall concept of this book is very good and doing away with explaining how and why magic is in the this world and taking that from fact at the start allows the book to instead explore the different kinds of mages and how they manipulate the forces at their disposal which is great to see and something that is not often done in comics instead with all magic users simply being branded as mages or sorcerers and moving on.
Eric Koda“s artwork throughout proves to be a little inconsistent when reading the book. Some of his panels are stunning and in a lot of cases remind me Leinil Yu“s current work with very clean lines and colouring that serves to accentuate his pencils. Some of the panels though seem a little rushed and panels where a character is moving from one room to the next or are in the process of having a conversation lose a lot of that detail and effort that is clearly put in to the action sequences and splash pages. The character designs on The Horus though are really inventive looking completely faceless and evil wearing ancient Egyptian god masks.
Overall the Agency is a comic with a lot of potential however, at the moment without that interesting character to hook us in it is a very predictable story, that whilst the concept is great the execution and the story that builds off the concept is nothing that you haven“t seen before. It is a light easy read and I hope that as time goes delves deeper into the characters and provides some interesting situations for the characters to deal with.
By Matt Deery
2/5
Author Profile
- Matt Deery is an avid comic reader from the UK, relatively new to the writing scene but, enjoying being part of the Comic Crusaders team and getting to talk about some the books that I adore. Will read almost anything Marvel, with Spider-Man and Iron Man being my all time favorite comic book characters and has recently found a love for Image and Valiant books and generally anything Sci FI or Espionage related. Check out my twitter @brujah69ad if you want to stop by and talk comics, video games or movies!
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