Paul Cornell (1) (1967–)

This Hugo Award finalist takes several real historical witches or magicians who were alive during World War II and posits what they might have done if they were to use their magic to take down Adolf Hitler; it's written by my longtime favorite Paul Cornell and illustrated by a new-to-me artist, Valeria Burzo. (It's in six chapters, so I had thought it was a collection of six issues, but it seems to be an original graphic novel.)

Ever since I read Captain Britain and MI13, I have known that Cornell is a good comics writer, and this is among his better work. The concept is super fun, and the historical notes at the back bring a lot of enjoyment to the story, as you work out what really happened and what he embellished. All the protagonists pop off the page, and the story has a number of good twists and turns and audacious moments and big payoffs. I particularly liked what Cornell did with Aleister Crowley's "wickedest man in the world" shtick (though for some reason he consistently misquotes it), Doreen Valiente's struggle to believe in her own magic, and Rollo Ahmed's perpetual outsider status. This is a neat group of characters in reality, and it's neat to see them come together in fiction in a way they did not in reality.

It's an easy read but an interesting one too, and I liked Burzo's artwork a lot; combined with Jordie Bellaire's colors, it's simple but effective in communicating both character and action.… (altro)

My rating of this book is both subjective and specific, but I think it's a magical and vital piece of Doctor Who history. This is a miscellany of items from fanzines, mostly from the '80s and '90s with occasional nods to the '70s. Although it is described as being edited by Paul Cornell, in fact he provides substantial introductions and guidance throughout.

When this book was first published in 1997, it seems there were negative reviews from some quarters. These were put down to Cornell's allegedly preferential treatment of whom he included, of presenting certain views of fandom, and just a general feeling that a book like this didn't present fans at their most erudite or intellectual. The thing is, twenty-five years later, this is exactly what I'm looking for. There are a few other books where writers have taken their own fanzine pieces and republished them with the aim of self-glorification. There are a couple of collections of fanzine writings that seek to present exactly that intellectual edge. (To be clear, most of these zines are long dead and punishingly unavailable online.) But Cornell was providing a snapshot of a key moment in the program's history, and it's as if he could imagine me in 2022 lapping this up.

The show's "wilderness years" (1990 - 2004) are exactly the period of my interest, a time after the already publicly-dismissed program was cancelled (well, "rested") and before it returned to mainstream attention. Fans committed themselves, in those heady days when the internet was a novel way of communicating and shoddy copies of old episodes on VHS were the most effective ways of watching past media, to preserving, protecting, revising, challenging, sharing, debating, dismantling, recreating, and extolling the twenty-six seasons of this program. Not only was this a major factor in why the series ultimately returned, and to such popular acclaim, but it directly influenced the careers of dozens of these fans who went on to work as professional writers, actors, directors, producers, creatives, talent agents, and so on - many of them using those talents directly on Doctor Who. For someone of my generation seeking to better understand how these years unfolded, Cornell's book fits snugly around my desires.

Some of it is silly now, and some of it only makes sense if you have a synoptic understanding of those twenty-six years. But if so, this is the historical document for you.… (altro)

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.… (altro)