Writer: Rob Dunlop
Artist: Peter Lumbly
Publisher: Ablaze Media
Trainee stage magician Tozzer and his friends Rod and Hornie return to the famous Boarboils School of Drama for another term, only to find that something suspicious is going on at the school...
Yes, it's a Harry Potter spoof. Well, to be fair it's a spoof of pop culture in general, with George Lucas, Michael Jackson and Lara Croft all joining in the fun, and to be perfectly honest, a good amount of the humour fell flat for me. I did enjoy a couple of the jokes and references, and the revelation of the villain works very well (but then, I've never really liked the fellow in question, so I always enjoy seeing him lampooned), but for whatever reason, most of the attempts at humour failed as far as I'm concerned.
So it's a good thing that quite apart from the jokes, this is a well-constructed story that even the grumpiest curmudgeon can enjoy. Things move along at such an urgent and enthusiastic pace that it's hard not to be drawn into the fun and excitement, and there's a good solid action/adventure plot in there among the celebrity cameos. I also have to give writer Dunlop considerable credit for not simply sitting back and sticking the cameos and references in willy-nilly; most, if not all, have a sense of logic to them, as ridiculous as that sounds in reference to a comic that features Vin Diesel and Michael Moore side-by-side. Like Alan (no relation) Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, there's never a sense that all these characters have no right to be in the same story together.
Much of the book's success is down to Peter Lumbly's art; at first, I found it rather grotesque and ugly, but I've warmed to the style with further reading, and Lumbly is actually a very strong visual storyteller. It's also worth mentioning Eric Erbes' colouring on this re-release of the original black and white volume; Erbes makes use of a vibrant and varied pallette, but also keeps things simple and doesn't smother the pages in unnecessarily flashy effects that overpower the line art. The overall look is so subtle and effective that it's difficult to imagine this book ever being printed without colour.
So I'm in the strange position of quite liking a title that really isn't my kind of thing, but that in itself is something of a recommendation, I suppose. There’s lots to enjoy here, and I’m famously grumpy, so I’m sure it’s probably a lot funnier than I think it is too.
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