The story begins in the middle of the night at the Bristol County Mental Health Institution. A very seedy looking security guard is paying a visit to one of the patients. The guard has come to molest a teenage girl by the name of Lena who is fast asleep in her bed. As he touches to remove her clothing his hand lights on fire. Lena wakes up and is visibly upset, blaming the institution for her losing control of her powers. The guard spouts of some typical nonsense about how sorry he is and that he thought she liked it, which is just before she burns him alive.
The next day two boys are heading down to a shed behind a church discussing the sexual orientation of Luke Skywalker. When they open the door of the shed they find Lena asleep inside of the shed. One of the boys runs to find Father Swain since neither of them know the girl. Meanwhile, at the church Father Swain is dealing with a visitor of his own by the name of Danae. She has been searching for Lena and can feel her magic presence at the Church. Father Swain assures her that he doesn't have the girl; little does he know that she's underneath his nose. That is until Ben runs in to inform the Father about the girl in the shed. Danae takes off for the shed as the Father is left scratching his head.
Back at the shed Darius reaches out to touch Lena and her magic powers react to him just like the guard, only he doesn't catch fire. Lena awakens and is freaked out by the boy standing over her. They don't have much time to react to each other as Danae marches up from behind and strikes Lena with some magic of her own. She secures Lena and brings her into the church. It is believed that Lena is the one responsible from bringing magic back into the world.
Elsewhere in the country a group of people begin developing magic powers in a shopping mall, which proves to be very chaotic. The mall breaks into anarchy as the people developing the powers have no control of them. The incident makes its way onto the President's desk as he meets with his magic advisor Mr. Hicks. Hicks begins walking the President through magical incident after incident until it's clear that magic is returning to the world and must be stopped.
The tagline for the series is, "Where were you when Magic returned?" and frankly that alone made me want to read the book. As far as the concept goes it's a little like Lucid in the regards of magic returning to everyone. Where they different is in their execution. Lucid's setting is the not too distant future which gives it a much more sci-fi feel to it. Magus is set in the modern era and achieves its path to magic much differently from Lucid.
The story and plot are well written and interesting, but what tends to fall short is the dialog. A majority of the book is spent developing the story and as such the characters are not fleshed out. At the beginning of the story Lena seems like the focus/star of the book, but by the end the story is leaning more towards Darius being the focus. Jon Price does a good job of establishing the world and at least introducing the key players of the story. Hopefully the second issue will establish the history of a few of the characters so that their motivation can be learned.
Another thing that Magus shares with Lucid is an amazing female artist. Rebekah Isaacs (DV8: Gods and Monsters) is the pencil for the book and boy does she make it look pretty. Isaacs puts a great deal of detail into the characters and is very strong when drawing facial expressions. Her character designs are quite good and make the characters distinct while the reader learns the character's name.
This book was a bit shocking actually. I didn't know what to expect from it other than the awesome tagline. The opening scene of the book really showed from the beginning that it was for mature audiences and that it wasn't going to hold back. The issue had a bit of a weekly TV drama vibe to it which gave it familiarity. If you're interesting in reading this book then I recommend checking it out on Graphic.ly either through their website or their Chrome Web Store app which is where I got it from. The first issue is free and loads instantly making it ready to read. Even if it wasn't free it's definitely worth picking up and trying it out.
Back at the shed Darius reaches out to touch Lena and her magic powers react to him just like the guard, only he doesn't catch fire. Lena awakens and is freaked out by the boy standing over her. They don't have much time to react to each other as Danae marches up from behind and strikes Lena with some magic of her own. She secures Lena and brings her into the church. It is believed that Lena is the one responsible from bringing magic back into the world.