(++++) ALL UNHALLOWS’ EVE

Bad Magic: A Skulduggery Pleasant Graphic Novel. By Derek Landy with P.J. Holden, artist; Matt Soffe, colourist; Rob Jones, letterer; Pye Parr, designer. HarperCollins. $17.99.

     Derek Landy’s genre-bending Skulduggery Pleasant novels – fantasy books that mix horror, humor, crime, the supernatural and a few other oddments here and there – are so clearly descriptive of bon mots and mayhem that they are naturals for graphic-novel adaptation. The surprising thing is that it has taken so long for such an adaptation to appear: the series began in 2007. And what shows up in graphic-novel form as Bad Magic is not part of the main Skulduggery Pleasant sequence (actually sequences; there are several) – it is a standalone story (within which Landy, with his usual aplomb, sets up a sequel).

     All this is just fine. The world of Skulduggery Pleasant – who is a nattily dressed reanimated skeleton who, together with his family, was killed by an evil sorcerer in a war 400 years ago – has plenty of room for further growth. It has already blossomed into two extended series of novels, the start of a third, a batch of short stories and novellas, a choose-your-adventure tale, a reference guidebook, and more. Landy has a habit, in the novels that still make up the primary elements of the various series, of starting with books of reasonable length (around 400 pages, sometimes less) and producing longer and longer novels (600+ pages) as matters progress. So having a work as compressed as a self-contained graphic novel is something of a pleasure.

     Bad Magic provides no backstory on Skulduggery and his partner, Valkyrie Cain (who has been just as crucial to the sequence since she originally appeared in the first book as Stephanie Edgley, before discovering her own supernatural powers). Instead of trying to lay any sort of foundation, the graphic novel plunges immediately into the mystery of the town of Termoncara, “the murder capital of Ireland” (as one minor character blithely puts it). For her part, Valkyrie neatly encapsulates what she and Skulduggery are doing there: “We’re sent in to figure out who needs punching and then punch them.” And there is plenty of punching in Bad Magic, along with lots of the trademark dialogue that leavens the violence – as when Valkyrie, in the midst of a huge battle and appearing nearly explosive in her anger, loudly demands, “WHO INTERRUPTED OUR BANTER?” (This is right after someone takes Skulduggery’s hat – a major no-no.)

     The visualizations of the characters are well-done, if somewhat exaggerated. Skulduggery’s appearance is excellent, not only as a skeleton but also when he puts on human faces whose exact appearance he is never quite able to see. But Valkyrie is somewhat too chiseled-looking: a panel in which she is in an exercise pose on the floor, supported only by her toes and one finger of one hand, makes her look borderline grotesque. The renderings of the Termoncara residents are quite fine, if formulaic; and the appearances of the many and varied mostly-invisible-to-the-residents monstrosities that abound in the town are finer still – clearly Landy and his artistic supporters lavished more care on them than on the mere humans.

     The plot of Bad Magic is fairly thin and not the main point: there have been 20 years of murders of various “undesirables” in Termoncara, the reason being that a super-baddie that goes by “Mr. Friendly” is getting the town ready to be massacred because “as soon as I kill enough teenagers, I’ll be free to wander the world, just like he wants me to.” That makes no sense, but it is the setup for a followup, as in “who is this ‘he’?” In any case, Skulduggery and Valkyrie eventually mop up the mess at Termoncara, create a suitably unbelievable cover story that of course will be believed by outsiders because the truth would be far less credible, and prepare to move on to the next town in need of saving. What will stay with readers is none of that – what matters here are the numerous action scenes, the chance actually to see Skulduggery and Valkyrie using their physical and supernatural powers on grotesqueries of all sorts, and the ongoing sallies and ripostes in which the two protagonists constantly indulge. “Violence is not always the answer, Valkyrie,” comments Skulduggery at one point; to which Valkyrie replies, “What? Since when?” That is what Bad Magic is all about. And it’s not bad at all.