Comic Review: Curse Words Volume 1

Curse Words is an Image Comics series from writer Charles Soule and artist Ryan Browne about wizards in the real world.

It also has a talking koala.

After a brief mise-en-scene, we meet the wizard Wizord.  Yes, that is his name.  He’s been sent from an alternate dimension to warn the people of Earth about a dire magical threat coming from his dimension.

He leaves out the part that he actually is that threat.

Fortunately for the people of the Earth, Wizord soon comes to like the world and decides to stick around.  This obviously displeases his old master, but Wizord doesn’t really care.  He just tells some half-truths and most people believe him.  His only ally that knows the truth is a familiar (I think it’s a familiar as the series never really says what it is), originally in the form of a rat but now a talking koala.  The familiar’s name is Margaret.

Wizord seems to be enjoying his time to himself, but there are some problems when his old master cuts off his magical supply and his ex-girlfriend comes looking to kill him.  Can Wizord do…whatever it is he’s out to do?  He’s not really here to save the day, but he doesn’t want to condemn the population either.  Much of what he does, he does to cover up the true nature of his mission anyway, even if he has no intention of fulfilling it.

Curse Words was fun, maybe not the best work I’ve read from Soule, but it has a lot of promise and can probably only improve.  Eight out of ten shrunken baseball parks.