When a story is about magic, it has to make a choice. Is magic answerable to supernatural rules, or scientific ones?
Any story is based around cause and effect. It’s based on choices and consequences. We feel cheated when characters don’t face consequences, when human nature and human lives contradict what our experience of the world is. In dealing with a stories’ magic, the same thing holds true. If the magic rules are scientific, that gives us clear cause and effect. You want to cast this spell? You’ll need this much energy, plus everything that goes in the cauldron. Boom. Everyone knows the rules. The audience never feels cheated.
But, if you’re dealing with magic that holds supernatural rules, it’s far more difficult to keep the audience’s suspension of disbelief. If magic works simply because it’s magic, then why can’t the hero snap their fingers, and solve every problem in one fell swoop? Which brings us to the question, how can we make magic consistent, when it doesn’t have any obvious rules?
Which brings us to Al Ewing and Lee Garbett’s Loki: Agent of Asgard
, an all-new graphic novel from Ominous Press. We talk about the team’s approach to relaunching the Dreadstar universe, why Starlin continues to escalate cosmic stakes in work on Thanos and now Dreadstar, and whether Marvel Studios has appropriately compensated Starlin for his many Marvel Cosmic creations, including Thanos, Drax, Gamora, & Shang-Chi (among many more!).