Our billionaire responsible for
the recreation of the Illuminati has come back down from orbiting the earth on
his private space station for his birthday celebration. Matthew and Wren will need to crash
the billionaire’s exclusive party, but before that Matthew must clear his head if he’s
going to possibly go up against the man who killed Kennedy and another who may
be the Pendragon. He begins walking back to his room when he sees a
glowing light coming out of the window. He kicks in the door to find Ariah
sitting naked on his bed. Turns out that she can manifest her physical form on a full moon night and she’s quick to clear Matthews mind before the night is
over.
The next night Matthew and Wren
make their way to the party in which Edison is set up as the door man. He
attempts to kiss the hand of Wren, but she smacks him and cries outrage. This distracts the other doormen as they
become more concerned with dealing with Edison rather than checking their
invitations. Once inside they separate, Matthew stays at the party waiting for
the billionaire Pendragon to show himself while Wren begins searching for the
black book of magic. The billionaire makes his appearance finally and begins
addressing everyone there as members of the Illuminati. He then goes on to
display his new technology that allows him to perform magic, by attacking
Matthew. The billionaire’s suit contains thousands of spells he’s collected
over the years and has recently added the black book to its library. Matthew is
taken under by one of the spells in which he’s taken to a dark time in his
past. Ariah shows up to save Matthew as he’s about to take his own life. She
reminds him that he still has plenty to live for and that he is just trapped in
a spell. Matthew comes out of the spell and breaks out some powerful magic to
defeat the spoiled billionaire.
*Spoiler Warning* If you haven't read the issue you may want to call it good here.
It’s then revealed that the fake
Pendragon’s Merlin is no other than Edison. Apparently Edison could no longer
wait for the return of magic and has taken it upon himself to return it to the
realm. He surprises Wren and casts a spell on her that makes her decay while
still alive. Ariah take’s Matthew to him with her last bit of strength before
she loses her human form. Edison is shocked to see her, but is also quick to
cast a spell that expels her from the earth realm. Matthew and Edison begin
battle and as the do Edison tells Matthew that the only reason he picked him to
replace himself was because he knew Matthew was no good at magic.
The beginning of this issue was a
bit rough. It had a lot of closure for the series, but as a standard issue goes
it was a very shaky start. Otherwise the writing is very good and interesting
as it answers all of the mysteries introduced throughout the first three
issues. The explanation of Ariah was perhaps the most important mystery to explain
and the cliffhanger with her character gives reason for the series to be
revisited in another volume.
The art continues to be
fantastically beautiful and as promised: Drool, drool, drool, wipes lip, drool,
drool, drool, drool hits the table, drool, drool, even more drool. No seriously
the art is my favorite part of this book. The writting is very strong and the
characters are interesting, but the art is so stunning that I look through the
book before reading it which is a huge compliment to Anna Weiszczky. I can’t wait till the hardcover is released just so I can
have all the art collected into one magnificent book.
The ending to this series was
pretty good, but it just wasn’t as strong or shocking as I was expecting. I
almost think that Edison’s double cross wasn’t nearly as powerful as the return
of Virgil could have been. After all there were very few clues that pointed to
Edison and really not enough to have figured it out until the reveal. The thing
that this issue does best is set the series up for a second volume, which I’m
definitely not opposed to. The characters and world are rich enough that I would
love to see everything explored further. If you missed out on Lucid then fear
not the hardcover collecting the first volume releases in March, or you could
just track down the single issues either way it’s worth it.
Overall Score - 9.0/10