Reversal

Two years ago, magic became a thing again and Robin Grant, a scientist at the Institute for Magic, is doing her best to try and understand it.  For both the good of the world at large, and for her immediate family which includes her father-in-law, her two sons, and her impaired daughter, Tre.  It’s Tre who finds a strange sword while out for a walk with her granddad and before she can give it to her mom for inspection, a dragon attacks her apartment building.  So she does what any kid who just found a potentially magical artifact would do:  She unsheathes it and promptly turns into buff, adult, white, magical prince Niko who promptly fights the thing off.  It’s a good thing Niko is handy to have around in a fight – because all of this may have been his fault.

“Reversal” is a modestly enjoyable graphic novel written by Alex De Campi and illustrated by Skylar Patridge that doesn’t take full advantage of its premise.  Rather than have a scientist at the Institute for Magic actually try and dig into how magic works, we get a familiar story about two opposing cultures who hate and fear each other and how a small family group has to bring them together.  While that’s certainly relevant to our troubled times, the answers we get here feel too simplistic  to really satisfy.  More enjoyable is seeing the Grant family try to deal with everything and help Niko deal with his own issues.  This and Patridge’s capable art means the experience isn’t a bad one, just one that I felt like I could take or leave by its end.