Madame Xanadu: Disenchanted collects the first ten issues of the Vertigo title by Matt Wagner and Amy Reeder Hadley, telling the origin of the erstwhile mystery host created by Michael Kaluta in the 1970s.
A note: The book appears to take place in some sort of unusual parallel dimension where women's noses become invisible except when viewed in profile. Just nares perched above the lip and below a great flatness reaching up to the hairline. Odd.
I enjoyed it. Xanadu is immediately revealed as Nimue, lover of Merlin and younger sister of Morgana and Viviane (the Lady of the Lake), and descendant of the elder folk who inhabited Britain with the Celts. We see her at the fall of Camelot, in Kublai Khan's China (whence her nom de la mystere), at the fall of the French monarchy, back in England in 1888, and at the birth of the Golden Age. Throughout, she interacts with the Phantom Stranger.
I groaned when I realized that Xanadu was getting mixed up in the Ripper case. Bah, humbug.
Otherwise, however, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It is refreshingly without writer's ego; it is meant to entertain, not to shock or confuse or draw admiration for transgression fannish or otherwise, and it has no apparent intention to give the character the exclusive brand of this particular writer to preclude all others. It's just a story about this character, created by hands before and, one expects, to be continued by hands since.
The art, discounting my jocular aside above, is attractive, clear, expressive, and pleasant to read. I note that the Stranger is depicted with a style distinct from all the other characters;* this is a nice touch.
*But one, and there are sound arguments for the similar depiction of this character, who appears only in a single panel at the end of the book.
Another thing I appreciated were the many callbacks to DC continuity. The Demon of the fall of Camelot is obvious, of course (though Morgana herself is not the Kirby model). More pleasantly surprising was a certain jade lamp that needed to begin its journey from China to the west. I thought Death's appearance mildly off-character, and Xanadu was mistaken about her order of birth. But I'm a sucker for John Zatara, so the book ended on a high point.
Verdict: The book exceeded my expectations, and I recommend it.
Posted by Greg at November 17, 2009 11:35 PM