MAGE AND THE ENDLESS UNKNOWN

Young Mage is sent out to explore a fantastical world with dark sides.

Titular Mage is an innocent magic-wand user. Their design is rounded and has a wholesome, vintage, ligne claire feel to it, giving them strong characterization from the start. Their happy exploration of ruins and use of plant magic are interrupted by a monster that swallows them whole—and that’s only the beginning of the creatures they face. In this almost wordless graphic novel, readers make meaning and piece together the narrative by following the art. This narrative device effectively captures reader sympathy and induces a shared sense of exploration. The art is also a pleasure to follow all on its own, with exquisite linework and detail, especially in the surprises and horrors—some of them quite grotesque and embracing body horror—that Mage faces. Each page has a heavy border; while some have multiple panels, most are single-page, and the effect is as though readers are looking through a portal to Mage’s world. What little text there is gives key insights to Mage’s purpose, though it is ambiguous enough not to spoon-feed information. On their journey, Mage meets and bonds with two strangers, in particular, who remain unnamed until backmatter character sketches. One of them has an elven vibe with pointy ears and is a bespectacled, curious, book-carrying being with dark skin; other characters are pale or not humanoid. (This review has been updated to correct a character's pronoun.)

Phenomenal.