MAGIC TRIXIE by Jill Thompson

MAGIC TRIXIE is an original 96-page colour comic book by Jill Thompson, published last year by HarperCollins (who have really put together quite an impressive comics library, with this, MIKI FALLS, CORALINE, ZOT and many other interesting sounding things I haven't read). The title character is an energetic young witch living in the city with her extended family (and a talking cat) and attending school with a variety of other classic monster types, including a werewolf, an Egyptian mummy, a stitched-together Frankenstein-style boy and twin vampires (with a ghost as their teacher).

In this debut story, Trixie is upset by all the attention that her baby sister is getting, and is also under pressure to come up with something new and exciting for show-and-tell by the end of the week. In the end, she tries to combine her two problems, not in the wisest of ways, but learns some valuable lessons.

I've had mixed feelings about Thompson's work in the past, liked her run as artist on THE SANDMAN quite a bit, thought she was okay on WONDER WOMAN, didn't like a few other things, including the "manga" Sandman spin-off books she did. Her prior work most like this new book is probably the SCARY GODMOTHER series she did a few years back. I only read a few short samples of that, and it didn't really inspire me to check out more.


Now that I've read this I'm inspired to check out more (and fortunately it looks like my library has one of the SCARY GODMOTHER books, and even a DVD of an animated version that I didn't even know existed). This is a great little book, reading really quickly but also with enough detail that you can go back and just look for little clever things in the artwork, admire the variety of character designs or marvel at the body language that carries much of the story, with several passages containing minimal dialogue.

There's already been one sequel to this book (MAGIC TRIXIE SLEEPS OVER) and another on the way (MAGIC TRIXIE AND THE DRAGON). And there's an in-character blog for Trixie where you can see a lot more art and find out about the characters.