Paul Cornell (1) (1967–)

The Witches of World War II treats "The Magical Battle of Britain" in graphic novel format, collecting six issues of a comic book of the same title. In this case, the author Paul Cornell has made Doreen Dominy (later Valiente) the central protagonist as the leader of an intelligence cell that includes Aleister Crowley, Gerald Gardner, Dion Fortune (whose actual name Violet Firth is never mentioned), and Rollo Ahmed. Cornell admits that he has taken significant liberties with the history involved, as extreme as having Crowley die as a martyr for England in Nazi Germany.

The book is furnished with an afterword from historian Ronald Hutton, who is a noted and reliable researcher of twentieth-century British occultism. Professor Hutton points out many of the likely errors and evident impossibilities in the story, along with some of the actual events and likely facts that were used as scaffolding. He does so in a friendly spirit with an allowance for inaccuracy among the surviving sources.

Allowing for creative license and storytelling efficiency, I was still bothered by the story showing antagonism between Crowley and Fortune (Cornell admits to knowing better himself), collapsing Rudolf Hess and Heinrich Himmler into a single character, and repeatedly calling Crowley "the most evil man in the world," rather than his actual yellow press title of "The Wickedest Man in the World." If the book had been using the story to court larger ideas the way that Douglas Rushkoff did in his graphic novel Aleister & Adolf, I might have been more willing to cut it some slack. But mostly it seemed to amount to a superheroine origin story for Doreen Valiente.

The illustration work by Valeria Burzo is in a very traditional comics style, effective for the characterizations and action. Colorist Jordie Bellaire kept to customary flat colors, but did some nice non-black line work in visions, dreams, memories, and reflections.

I have read other reviewers who found The Witches of World War II "boring." It held my attention pretty well, but I'm a soft touch for the subject matter. For a better comic on the subject, I would recommend the aforementioned Rushkoff book, and for a far more sprawling and sophisticated fiction that uses the capture of Hess as a touchstone event, Jake Arnott's The House of Rumour.… (mais)

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/a-long-day-in-lychford-by-paul-cornell/

Third in the series of Lychford books by Paul Cornell, this is a rare case of a fantasy novel addressing Brexit. The magical women of Lychford are dealing with the internal consequences of the referendum, prejudice against foreigners and people of colour, and at the same time an eruption of danger from the much older inhabitants of their space. I see a lot of Lychford fans were not wowed by it, but I found it a thoughtful reflection on difficult political circumstances.… (mais)

In my opinion slightly rushed story-line. There is no tension here because it is more than obvious that Black Widow will defeat all of her enemies.

Where this volume delivers is personal history of Black Widow - how she became super-spy and assassin. Everything else seems to be just a background story to keep the page-count at regular level. I think that they could have done much better - for example imagine story in the likes of Wolverine Origins or X-Weapon, that would be awesome :) - but I guess that Black Widow was always on the margins and not class-A Marvel hero.

Nevertheless interesting story (character background) and therefore 3.5 stars (3 stars in goodreads since I cannot find half-star rating :))

Recommended for fans of Marvel's hero stories and Black Widow in particular.… (mais)