‘Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files: Wild Card #1’ Review

Story by Jim Butcher and Mark Powers, Pencils by Carlos Gomez, Colour by Mohan


Continuing the story told in the novels and previous comic books, Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files: Wildcard places us in the world of Harry Dresden; Wizard for Hire. This book is the first of a six-issue limited series, and it’s very good.

‘Very good’ might be underselling it a little. As it stands, I was gripped from the first page. This is definitely a page-turner. The story starts with the titular character Harry Dresden investigating a couple of very strange murders. This is a great starting point, as you’re immediately hooked on the mystery of who’s behind this. Dresden Files has a distinctly noir flavour, which suits the murder-mystery premise perfectly. Harry himself is like a magical P.I. Imagine a detective trained at Hogwarts and you get a rough idea.

I found the main character and his supporting cast immensely likable. The dialogue between the characters feels very natural, a credit to the writers Jim Butcher and Mark Powers. Dresden has two companions during his initial investigations. Both are strong female characters with the first being Murphy, a cop who seems to resent Dresden for leaving her out of the loop. The other is Dresden’s apprentice, Molly. She’s the hot-headed type whose nature is in opposition to Dresden’s seemingly laid back attitude. These characters are very well written and don’t come across as one-dimensional cut outs.

There are some great pop-culture references in this story, such as Dresden calling Molly ‘padawan’ at one point. This has the effect of making it seem more real and based in our world. Adding to this effect, the characters do mundane, everyday things while discussing the supernatural things they deal with.

dresden image

The art by Carlos Gomez and Mohan is just an absolute pleasure to look at. It’s very crisp and bold. The way Gomez draws the female characters is vaguely reminiscent of the work of Terry Dodson and J. Scott Campbell. His style doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is great for the tone of the comic. The colours are incredibly vibrant and pop off of the page. It just looks great and really gels with the line work. I would love to see Gomez and Mohan’s art in more comic books.

If there is one little gripe it’s that, because it is set in an already established fictional reality, there are some events referenced that the reader may be unaware of. Thankfully, this does nothing to make the story harder to follow.

This is a very enjoyable start to the series with an interesting premise and well written characters that I look forward to seeing take the next step in their adventure. There isn’t really anything I can truly pick fault with, and I look forward to seeing where the story goes next.

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