Curse Words vol. 4: Queen Margaret

Well, Wizord and Ruby Stitch had a good run in our world but it looks like it’s coming to a very violent end.  It’s all down to the return of vengeance-seeking Frenchman — now with magic of his own — Jacques Zaques. While his initial attack doesn’t go quite the way he was expecting, Jacques soon meets up with one Mr. Opaque to get some magical training.  It’s during this training that he hits upon an idea that’ll put Wizord in a world of hurt: Putting together a magical team. Wizord has made lots of enemies since arriving on Earth and convincing them to team up to put the wizard in the ground may wind up being the easiest thing Jacques does in this series.  While this is going on, Wizord and Ruby find out that the Hole World the wizard created for the people who were in the stadium he zapped away is actually a really nice place. Margaret, on the other hand, is still confused about her actual relationship to the two magical people, but has a bigger problem on her hands when it comes time to meet her secret crush in Australia.

As the penultimate volume in this series “Queen Margaret” does a decent enough job of setting things up for the endgame.  I say “decent enough” because Jacques’ story is really the only one driving the action for the majority of the volume. Barring a couple plot-relevant scenes here-and-there, it feels like writer Charles Soule didn’t have much of an idea about what to do with his main cast while Jacques got his act together.  So he just had Wizord and Ruby zone out on the couch and Margaret get involved in some sitcom-level mistaken-identity shenanigans. Artist Ryan Browne does what he can to keep all this interesting, but that’s a really tall order when the opening scenes have him drawing the Titanic, reanimated as a monster boat, chowing down on Jacques.

Things really don’t kick into full gear until the final issue.  That’s when Jacques’ team really starts putting the screws to Wizord for all that he’s done.  We also find out just how the Hole World wound up the way it is in a way that sets things up for some time-travel causality shenanigans next time.  Then you’ve got Margaret making her move and it’s not something you’d expect — because it involves tigers. It’s all good stuff that leaves the series in a good place as it heads into its final volume, even if it took its sweet time in getting there.