Matt Wagner's Vertigo reboot of longtime DC property "Madame Xanadu" gets its third collected edition, with original artist Amy Reeder Hadley returning after taking an arc off (though she is joined here by Joelle Jones for a few issues). The title continues to be mostly in top form for this story arc, which covers issues 16 to 23 of the series. Wagner continues to make creative use of DC Comics characters, which is not something usually seen in Vertigo in the last decade or so, and brings more elements of Madame Xanadu's backstory into play. Some spoilers follow.
Xanadu's backstory has always been a little chaotic, with her beginnings in Arthurian mythology (she is Nimue, the sorceress who became involved with Merlin and, depending on the telling, was responsible for his fall in some capacity), and then subsequently becoming attached to a completely unrelated gimmick (tarot card fortune-telling). Wagner has already negotiated that particular story link, and here revisits another aspect of her history: the struggle between the good Nimue and her evil sister Morgana/Morgan Le Fay, who was the architect of the fall of Camelot.
The story begins as a little domestic mystery centered around a 1950s housewife named Betty (with blonde hair similar to Grace Kelly's; I wonder if Wagner is a "Mad Men" fan), whose dull existence is suddenly plagued with unexplained occurrences and gradual physical transformation. She eventually seeks out our dear Madame, who takes the case, and in the process runs across another fellow DC superhero, Detective John Jones (the Martian Manhunter). Wagner's use of Jones is quite clever, assuming you know who he is, though otherwise you might find all this rather confusing. The story morphs from a mystery into a new conflict between Xanadu and her sister (Xanadu has a line at the end remarking on how she's almost forgotten the story started with Betty), with Jones along for the ride.
The result is fun; the backstory issues drawn by Jones that focus on the sisters' early years are interesting. The main story in the 1950s is fun, if, for the most part, not especially consequential. Wagner employs a number of standard tropes for the era, from the bored housewife to the implications of darkness lurking beneath the conformist surface (though thankfully he doesn't linger on these, which have long since become dead horses in and of themselves). He does all this with a light touch, and it's a brisk, entertaining read. Reeder Hadley's art is as good as ever.
Recommended.
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