Freshmen Year is almost over! From day one, people have been wondering – who is the savior of Strange Academy, and who can bring it all down? The future of Marvel Magic is going to be decided here and it will take FAR more than the Sorcerer Supreme and his school if magic has a chance! Written by Skottie Young, with pencils and inks by Humberto Ramos, colors by Edgar Delgado, and letters by Clayton Cowles.
Issue 1 begins with a recap of Strange Academy’s past events in the form of a letter written by a pink haired Strange Academy student who joined a walkout staged by Emily Bright, another student. Emily Bright’s crew are holed up in a portion of The Dark Dimension that is taking the form of an old summer camp she used to go to. Given that issue 2 of Midnight Suns also features the Dark Dimension in the final pages, I have to wonder about the nature of the place. Maybe there are areas that take the form of a place of personal significance.
Going back to the pink haired girl’s letter, it was intended for her parents. However when she hands it to fellow student Zoe Leveau, Zoe takes it to Emily. Emily burns the letter after reading it, using a cabin campfire. This angers Zoe, who feels Emily is being overly controlling towards her friends in order to “protect” them from the adults at Strange Academy.
On the one hand, Emily’s protectiveness isn’t entirely unwarranted. The teachers at Strange Academy are good at teaching magic, but they aren’t the best at relating to teenagers. Calvin, a former student, unexpectedly lost the source of his magic power and was just told to “study harder”.
When he took desperate measures to get his magic back by working for a shady magical being called Gaslamp, he was expelled without a second thought. If one of the teachers had helped Calvin had found a non-harmful way to recover his magical abilities, he wouldn’t have gone to Gaslamp and put his peers in harm’s way.
Speaking of Calvin, Zoe feels he is being used as Emily’s excuse to rebel against Strange Academy and she has a point. Emily and the others would be better off finding Calvin themselves, esp. since the next pages show that he is still working for Gaslamp & selling temporary magic wishes.
Poor Calvin soon finds himself in trouble when his stash of magic wishes is stolen from some “customers” who gang up on him. Consequently, Gaslamp takes Calvin to a place called The Drain, where Calvin will create more magic wishes by having all hope and joy drained from him. Given what Calvin has experienced, I’m surprised that he even has any hope and joy left.
Things then shift to the second period at Strange Academy, where the remaining students are learning about perception reality from Scarlet Witch. Perception reality is changing what you see to manipulate what others can see and is initially demonstrated with a harmless frost giant named Guslang.
However, the lesson takes a heavy turn when Doyle tries to project a perception of Emily Bright apologizing to everyone. His fears take over the perception and they take on a life of their own as Emily and his father Dormammu attack the school. While Skottie Young’s writing has been great throughout this issue, the perception reality pages are especially well done since Doyle’s perception is very foreboding and adds to the mystery of “Emily vs Doyle” prophecy that states one of them will destroy magic and the other will stop them.
To explain further, this prophecy was originally presented in a previous issue of Strange Academy and it initially appeared that Doyle was the one who would destroy magic. However, a time travel lesson to the future caused him to see a super powerful version of Emily with her own uber powerful magic crew. The similarities of this time travel lesson with the perception reality lesson is striking and eerie, making me wonder if Emily and Doyle really will have to fight each other.
Complementing Skottie Young’s writing is Edgar Delgado’s colors, which make Emily, Doyle, and fake Dormmamu’s flames visually striking and enhancing the tenseness of the situation. Clayton Cowles’ lettering also heightens the stakes emotionally, especially when it comes to Doyle’s speech bubbles. Doyle saying, “I’ve learned that the ones that are supposed to love you most will also be the ones who hurt you most.” has an air of bitterness to it as he thinks of Emily Bright.
Speaking of our girl, being in the Dark Dimension seems to be making her worse physically and emotionally. Her left arm, which can use Doyle’s Hellfire powers ever since she brought him back to life, seems to literally look like hell now. Emily also seems willing to make life hell for everyone, based on the way she insults Zoe when the latter compares her zombie state to Emily’s arm.
Soon, a fight breaks out and Emily smirks as she calls on the hellfire power to attack Zoe in her zombie form. Zoe tries to get the demon girl Dessy to help her, but with a mighty cry of “Noooo!” Dessy makes half the camp cabin explode. I’m curious to see why Dessy is on Emily’s side, especially since she and Zoe are dating in the ongoing Midnight Sun series.
The issue ends as Emily tells Zoe to leave and gives the other students a similar ultimatum: Go with Zoe and be treated like crap by Strange Academy or stay and help put an end to Strange Academy. It looks like Doyle’s projected fears might be coming true after all, but only time will tell.
Latonya Pennington
Latonya Pennington is a freelance contributor whose comics criticism can be found at Women Write About Comics, Comic Book Herald, Newsarama and Shelfdust, among others.
