‘Magic: Master of Metal #1’ Review

Writer: Mairghread Scott / Artist: French Carlomango, Jorge Coelho, Jacques Salomon, Francesco Segala / Boom! Studios One of the first long pieces of fiction I ever read was the novelization of Magic: The Gathering’s Ice Age. It centered around Jodah, Archmage Eternal, a character who didn’t make it into cardboard until many years later, but the point stands that I do owe a nontrivial part of my love of speculative fiction to Magic, and I’ve been digging the recent comic additions to the universe. As such, the latest Master of Metal one-shot definitely spoke to me. Tezzeret, the planeswalker artificer from Esper, is mechanically and thematically one of my favorite characters. Ambitious and adept at both social and actual engineering, he is a brilliant antagonist who has met his foes directly and indirectly, and any sort of insight into his character is always welcome in my book. Master of Metal is a collection of four, interconnected one-shots that showcase different aspects of the character. Mairghread Scott does a fantastic job of writing a perfectly sinister and charming tone for Tezzeret and puts him through a veritable gamut of situations. We get a little bit of backstory, a little bit of long-term scheming, a little tinkering, and a little bit of a lot of the future conflicts to come. It’s a fun read that covers a lot ground in the 40-pages, maybe to the point where I would have enjoyed having it to be a two-parter to give it a little room to breathe, but regardless, …