Charmed Season 9 Issue 7 'The Heir Up There' Review

Next up we have the most recent issue of Charmed, and this one only about a week after it came out! We have another great play on the history of the show here by the return of Kyle Brody. Apparently since he died in 2004 he spent the next five years as a Whitelighter and eventually worked his way up to the status of Elder. That’s not the only new piece of information – we find out that the Elders altered Melinda in order to make her also ‘twice blessed’ just like Wyatt. While it’s never specifically said that Chris is also twice blessed given the fact that he also has orb-based powers it’s safe to assume that. But it would have been kind of funny if older Chris was still around just to see his inferiority complex when he finds out that Melinda also has her own prophecy just like Wyatt.

We get a more fleshed out back story for Leo – which considering this storyline appears to focus more on him than the previous two I’m sure we’ll be getting a lot more information as it progresses. It turns out that Leo’s reward for battling an evil Darklighter Rennek was to be the Charmed Ones’ Whitelighter. It’s a nice little piece of information but its hard to consider that keeping the Charmed Ones lives is a reward.

Neena is back and is slaughtering vampires – I’m going under the assumption that it is because they won’t get in line with her plan. The only exception appears to be the current Vampire Queen Lorna who knows Neena and at some point betrayed her. Neena also seems to have ties to Rennek because he knows that she also goes by Isabel (a character that appears in ‘To The Warren Born’ I just haven’t covered it yet) and Victoria and he’s one of the few people that actually knows who and what Neena is.

I want to be fair about this issue but there is something about it that just seems off. I don’t know if it’s because there’s a new storyline starting or if it’s just sort of boring. I think it will take at least another issue for me to get a better grasp on the overall tone of this story – it should pick up soon considering that this arc is also going to be 5 issues and we’re already one into it. So far this is my least favorite issue, but only time will tell if that changes once I getter a better grasp on the actual story.

Rating: C

Charmed Season 9 Issue 6 'Morality Bites Back' Review

I went into this issue thinking that it’s going to be one of those things that all of the things that make it good are also the things that make it bad. Anyone who I’ve ever talked Charmed with knows that I absolutely cannot stand Phoebe  so the fact that this entire issue was going to be devoted to her came to bat with one strike already. The fact that this story is a continuation of the episode “Morality Bites” from season two was almost a slap in the face because of Prue existing in that potential future. Obviously things have changed, Paige now exists, and there are many more kids than just Melinda and obviously Phoebe isn’t on trial for the murder of Cal Greene. But lets be honest here, the second strike isn’t all of the extra kids or the fact that Paige exists – you know me… it’s all about the lack of Prue.

We don’t really get anybody new this time out – sure there’s the messenger Cherub but I really doubt that he’ll play a bigger role in the series. Cal Greene, and Nathaniel Pratt make their comic introductions – both of them were seen only in Morality Bites. Cal was the baseball player that Phoebe killed, and Nathaniel was the guy who kept walking his dog on the Halliwell’s yard and then in the future was the DA that prosecuted Phoebe. Finally after many mentions Elise Rothman finally makes her appearance in the comics and Mika makes her second appearance – but she looks different than the first time around. Nothing major, just younger than she first came off.

The good thing about this issue is that it sets a very specific timeline. Phoebe was executed in 2009, now even if you assume that given that she was publically outted as a witch she had a very speedy trial then Season 9 has to take place sometime between 2008 and February 26^th 2009 because that’s the date the sisters travel to back in season two. Now when you think about  how Phoebe isn’t even in custody, let alone about to be executed then it’s safe to assume that these events happen in late 2008 or even January 2009.

I like that this issue did tie up some things. Phoebe killed Cal with her Empathy power by focusing all of Cal’s rage on himself. Like I said it already cleared up the timeframe. We find out that the friend that Cal murdered was actually Elise. I’m not too sure that I’m on board with this. Part of me wished that they played off of the ‘Power of Three’ and that in the future where Prue lived that the person Cal murdered was Paige and that it was shortly after Prue, Piper and Phoebe found out about her. They could have turned it into the reason for there being four Charmed Ones was because one of them was always destined to die.

I am interested to see where they’re going to go with the fact that Elise now knows that Phoebe (and at the very least I’m assuming Paige since she healed her) is a witch. How much did Phoebe tell Elise, did she leave it as just being a witch or did she tell her everything? Now that Elise knows are we going to see more of her having to cover for Phoebe at work or have we officially started the Elise Rothman Deathwatch Clock? All in all, it was a good issue – much better than I thought it was going to be.

Rating: A+

Charmed Season 9 Issue 5 'Unnatural Resources' Review

Well now that I’m home I’m trying to play catch up and that brings me to Charmed Season 9 Issue 5 ‘Unnatural Resources.’ I’ve been a huge fan of  the use of history within this comic but at the same time I haven’t sat silently by and not voiced my thoughts on the history they’re choosing to leave out (for whatever reasons.) With this issue we do get a bit of a resolve with that when we finally see Grams and Billie for the first time this season - they were in the Book of Shadows along with Prue, Cole and the older versions of Chris and Wyatt but this is their first real appearances this year. There are more ties to the history when Piper uses Excalibur while Paige goes and collects small portions of magic from Billie, Mermaids, Leprechauns, Fairies, Nymphs and Unicorns.

I really liked this particular issue, but I think it might have been better suited as a double sized story – it would have helped to make certain things feel less rushed. Billie for example, it’s great that she’s here but when they’re going up against The Source and there’s this history of Prue dying because of it and how Billie ended up having to kill her own sister to save the world even something as simple as Paige trying to stop Billie from rejoining the fight by saying something like ‘haven’t both of our families lost enough already’ would have gone miles to make the story feel heavier than it is.

I get why they killed off Hogan, I mean this is the Source, and there’s multiple seasons worth of history establishing the fact that whenever he comes back someone HAS to die but again – rushed. There were a few unanswered questions like why Piper’s daughter Melinda can telekinetically orb; or what exactly Nina is; but I get the feeling that those two things will play larger roles in the near future. I do want an explanation as to why Paige named her children Tamora and Kat though; almost all of the kid’s names make sense except for those. There really isn’t anything much else to say that I haven’t said before: I want more Billie, and I actually like the idea of Tyler sticking around for a while but the problem is that he doesn’t really have established characters to interact with. He’s too young to spend all his time around Phoebe, Piper, Paige, Leo, Coop and Henry, he’s far too old to spend his time with all of the Halliwell kids and even if Billie was around more, or they brought back Future!Chris they’re both too to be around him.

Rating: A+

Charmed Season 9 Issue 4 'Mortal Enemies' Review

Check me out getting to the latest issue of Charmed without months of delay. Check out Charmed putting out on a now regular schedule it's so close to being a monthly book now it's not even funny! Check out the amazing new art that is a nice blend of comic book art and the likenesses of the cast instead of looking like the usual kind of umm semi-porn posed panels we had been getting! Check out my inability to let this joke go even though I’ve clearly run out of thinks to say ‘check it out.’

Seriously though you have no idea how happy I am that this book got back on track not only with it now actually being monthly but the art as well. The likenesses are amazing; the new artist really knows how to capture Holly Marie, Rose and Alyssa. It’s not without its faults though; but for the record they really aren’t that bad. The fight scene between Piper and her real estate agent did get a little ‘oh hey look at my breasts’ but it’s not so obvious that it takes away from everything else. Maybe I just noticed it more because of how I felt about the art on the previous issues.

I don’t know it it was the improvement in the art or that they had more time than usual to work on this issue while there was the hold out with the last artist but in the end who cares the writing also really stepped up it’s game here. This is the first time since 9.01 that it actually felt like I was watching an episode of Charmed, not because of uniqueness of certain plot points or referencing history but because of the overall feel of everything. Piper struggling with her life, the utter psychological horror that is expressed between Paige and Henry when The Source’s spell makes Henry try to kill Paige – that right there was pretty big and something that would have been done really well on the show playing off the fact that Henry and Paige based their lives off of the things they had seen when they were both in the foster care system and all the abuse cases Paige must have seen when she was a social worker.

We do get a few new things here when Hogan uses his discord power (that has now been augmented by The Source), we see Paige use her new orb shield in an interesting way to create a door stop to keep the now magically controlled innocents from getting into the attic, we also see an odd new power of Piper’s. She tries to either freeze or blow up The Source but instead she melts the ground he’s standing on. We also learn that Piper no longer has P3, but it’s not clear if she closed the club – one would assume because of the poor economy, or if she sold it, or why she no longer owns the actually property.

My only real complaint has to do with the whole ‘rage’ spell that The Source and Hogan cast – it the plan is to eliminate the Charmed Ones and the spell doesn’t work on magical beings this would have been a perfect time for a quick cut scene to Darryl and his family attacking Billie since it would stand to reason that Billie is a magical ally of the sisters it would make sense to cut off any magical help lines that they might have. And okay yeah, this is partly me digging my heels in and insisting they find a way to get Adult Chris, Billie and Prue all in the comics for some reason or another.

Rating: A+

Charmed Season 9 Issue 3 'Innocents Lost' Review

Okay, I know it’s taken me a long time to get around to reviewing Charmed Season Nine #3 ‘Innocents Lost’ but to be fair it took me nowhere nearly as long to review it as it did for the book itself to actually be published. This book was delayed for quite some time which is a huge problem in general but when you think about things like how Angel Season 6 has put out 30+ issues and Buffy Season 8 has put out 38 issues, 3 specials and the 39^th and final issue of Season 8will be out in like 2-3 weeks. So lets look at this… Buffy Season 8 is a total of 42 issues and has only slipped ONE TIME (which almost is a nod to the fans when you think about it that it slipped on the Fray storyline and that book when it came out before had a massive amount of delays) and yet Charmed is only on it’s 3^rd issue – 4^th if you count ‘The Book of Shadows’/Sourcebook and this is a monthly book that started in June/July 2010 and here we sit in December 2010 and we’re only on issue 3! So that’s 3 months worth of delays for a monthly book. I guess that part of the delay has to deal with the fact that the interior artist has decided to leave the book because of salary disputes. Again that’s kind of an unintentional nod to the history of the series when you think about it considering there were multiple cast changes and controversial departures of major characters.

While I’m talking about the artist I might as well talk about the art. While I was sad when Shannen Doherty left I’m going to be honest and say I’m glad that Dave Hoover is leaving the book. There’s nothing wrong with his art but I don’t like it. My big problem isn’t really the likenesses (he only really consistently nails Holly Marie Combs and has gotten better with Rose) because the Buffy book has the quirks and character traits that the likenesses don’t have to be 100%) but the fact that it’s too posed and the sisters have moments of pinup-ness that doesn’t really work. I know as the series progressed and gave into gimmicks, and camp that the style and look of the sisters became more sexualized but I hate when a comic book is that way. The picture I took (excuse the blurriness I took it with my phone) is the perfect example. The girls are ready to go fight evil… but I dare you to try to stand the way Phoebe is posed and not fall flat on your face.

Not to rag on the art too much but when you factor in the delays of the book it’s a huge letdown especially when the cover art for the books are so much better than the interiors. I’d rather the book be bi-monthly if I can get the cover artists working on the interiors of the book.

The story is really good and we finally get to see Henry which is nice because he’s the only one of the sister’s husbands that hadn’t been seen yet. Plus we find out that Darryl lives on the East Coast and that given the fact that Paige orbs Billie (who now lives in LA) off panel to ensure that nothing happens to Darryl’s family. While we don’t see Billie or Daryl we get to see Henry, Tyler Michaels (the firestarter child that appeared in season 4’s ‘Lost and Bound’ and we see (confirmed by the writers) Max Franklin who first appeared in season 1’s ‘Secrets and Guys.’ It’s nice to see little nods to the history of the show here, plus we get another little surprise – a cropped image of Shannen Doherty appears on the special chase version of the cover for this issue.

I could have dealt without the subplot of Phoebe doing a publicity stunt for her column where she marries a group of engaged couples – but honestly that’s classic Charmed, right down to the fact that she marries a cursed/reincarnated version of Romeo and Juliet who have been blessed/doomed to continue to marry each other over and over. I actually want to find out if being married by a Charmed One breaks the curse of having to relive their lives over and over. We do get some headway in the main plot of Neena and Hogan and learn that they are trying to bring back the Source of All Evil. Again this is classic Charmed but he’s been vanquished like 4-5 times now and I really don’t want to take that ride one more time. I really just hope that it stays as a generic Source instead of bringing back Cole (another plot I’m tired of) I guess it won’t be too bad. We do see some new things – Paige now has the ability to create an ‘orb’ based shield and Phoebe has her premonitions, levitation and now her empathy powers back – also the odd little thing is Piper’s molecular combustion power gives a rather odd sound effect ‘shzam’ – it’s really hard when I read it not to automatically assume it’s ‘Shazam.’

Rating: B
The plot was better than last issue, but the art was worse plus the multiple delays in publication make it very hard to rate this fairly.

Charmed Season 9 Issue 2 'No Rest for the Wicca' Review

You know, honestly I wasn’t looking forward to the second issue of Zenescope’s Charmed Season 9. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Charmed, but after being blown away by the ‘Book of Shadows’ issue it would be an understatement to say I was underwhelmed by ‘Charmed Lives.’

Honestly I’m not familiar with how Zenescope formats the books because Charmed is the only thing I read from this particular publisher; so it’s taking me a little while to get used to it. I actually like the fact that there are no ads until the end of the issue, but the downside is it makes it seem like a quicker read than it actually is. “Charmed Lives” had 21 pages however “No Rest for the Wicca” only has 20; 21 if you count the recap as a page. This wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that out of the 20 pages four of them are full page spreads and two of them are two page spreads. It seems to me like they could find a better use for the story than what they’ve used these pages for so far.

Out of the three covers for this issue I ended up with the wraparound cover, and I’ve got to say for the second month in a row I’m disappointed. The covers are so phenomenal, next to all the Jo Chen covers for Buffy the Charmed covers are my favorite. The problem is though the art on the covers is so good that when you look at Dave Hoover’s art on the inside you almost feel cheated. Don’t get me wrong though he does well with Holly Marie Combs’ likeness and he did a great job capturing the essence of Rose McGowan, it doesn’t look exactly like Rose, but you can tell it’s how ‘Paige’ would look as a comic book character. Phoebe though, wow she is definitely drawn the worst out of all the sisters. Leo doesn’t come off much better, he doesn’t even look like how Leo looked in the first issue, at least Phoebe is still the same as issue one.

Thankfully the plot pays off a lot better than the art does. The little recap written by Paige is kind of campy, but it works. I’m not entirely sure which of the two plots is supposed to be the A plot or the B plot because they’re both used equally. Phoebe and Piper go to the funeral of an innocent they saved who died of ‘natural causes.’ What makes this significant isn’t just the fact that the writer decided to access the huge library that is Charmed’s mythology; he went back almost to the beginning, all the way back to episode TWO of SEASON ONE- Piper’s friend Brittnay who was a victim of the demon Javna. Phoebe touches Brittnay’s casket only to have a vision of Brittnay’s rapidly aged corpse. Piper freezes everyone and they open the casket confirming Phoebe’s vision.

The C plot involves Neena and Hogan in the Underworld using a handful of lower level demons to construct something. It appears that they summoned something and have made a deal with it, although exactly what is going on still remains unclear. We do learn one thing though, Hogan can’t blink. I don’t know if this is supposed to imply that he’s also a lower level demon, or if he’s a Warlock who maybe hasn’t fully accessed his powers yet.

Meanwhile Paige is off trying to mentor her newest charge a nineteen year old High School senior named Brent who is just coming into his powers. She stops him and his friends from giving a swirlie to another student. After trying to explain to him about his powers Paige is forced to tackle Brent and orb him out of school when he attempts to use his powers on a teacher. She explains to him about Magic School and how important the next forty-eight hours are to how the rest of his life will play out (this ties into yet another plot from Charmed, you really have to respect the fact that the writers are actively using the history of this show in a way that actually makes sense); Brent says he needs a little while to figure everything out so Paige instructs him to call her name when he’s ready and she orbs back to Halliwell Manor. Seconds later Brent runs into Hogan and Neena who try to tempt Brent into being evil.

Back at the Manor Paige arrives to see Phoebe and Piper frantically looking through the Book of Shadows when suddenly Phoebe has a vision of many people in danger, she explains to her sisters that the vision she just had involved every innocent they ever saved and every charge Paige ever had being in great danger. The issue ends with Brent’s bloody corpse (his neck had been snapped) laid out on display to the entrance to Magic School.

The plot is amazing if for nothing more than the fact that it was dripping with references from previous seasons. Coop wasn’t in this ‘episode’ at all, but that’s fine because he wouldn’t have really served a point, not that Leo did either, but he’s been a staple of Charmed for so long that he kind of has to be inserted into at least one scene. I’m a little concerned by the fact that we still haven’t seen Henry at all, but it took us two ‘episodes’ before we even saw his and Paige’s children.

I’m looking forward to the next episode/issue especially with how “No Rest for the Wicca” played out. The fact that we got another mention of Prue, Neena and Hogan going after the Charmed One’s previously saved innocents and Paige’s charges really gives me hope that Billie will make at least an appearance, the teaser image of issue 3’s cover looks like it has the demon of Fear on it, so I’m hoping we’ll get more Prue references, if not even a flashback or a ghostly visit like Patty and Grams do. Of course the image of the woman drowning in Phoebe’s vision makes me think even more that we might get Prue soon if it really is the demon of fear on the cover because he used Prue’s fear of water and drowning to magnify her fear of loosing a sister to torment her. And this issue alone proves that the writers have no problem bringing up things from the past. I mean they used Brittnay and Javna and they were stand alone characters.

Rating: A+
Still not a fan of the art but the use of history blew me out of the water

Charmed Season 9 Issue 1 'Charmed Lives' Review

Well here we have the first official issue (episode) of Zenescope’s Charmed (Season 9). Since it’s only one issue in it’s hard to tell the type of format they’re going to use to tell these stories and I think it will take a while before it’s clear exactly what they’re going to do with it. The first issue isn’t a stand alone story, so the first ‘episode’ is going to take at least two issues to tell, but beyond that it’s unclear if Charmed will follow the Buffy Season 8 method of 4-5 issues per episode, or like Angel a 10-13 issue arch that serves as a half season.

The issue picks up a little over a year, eighteen months to be exact, after the end of season 8. Now be warned because everything beyond this point is all spoilers.


Now the continuity here is really questionable, even more so than the normal problems Charmed had while on the air. Piper and Leo are still married and even though the eighth season ended with Chris barely 2 years old some how Chris and Wyatt seem to be around 4-7 and Piper has a toddler, a baby girl named Melinda. I actually like that because it’s a little throw back to season 2 when they went to the future and Piper had a baby girl and how after Prue died Piper believed she’d never have her baby girl, and unlike Chris, Melinda is taking after their older brother and has access to her powers from birth. Leo is off running Magic School and Piper is in the process of opening a restaurant of her very own.

Phoebe is still married to Coop and are still living in their own place away from Halliwell Manor. Phoebe still writes her advice column for Elise, only she had taken a break because of the fact that she had gotten pregnant and gave birth to the baby girl she had been dreaming about for years. Prue; which if you know the history of Charmed and the legendary epic ‘battle’ between Alyssa and Shannen that led to Shannen leaving the show you can’t help but laugh at this a little…. Anyway, Prue is half Witch half Cupid which also makes her powers work a bit differently. Like Paige baby Prue can also teleport objects to (and one would assume away from) her only instead of orbing it’s ‘beaming.’ It remains to be seen if baby Prue has any other powers at this point.

Paige is still acting as an official unofficial Whitelighter in addition to teaching at Magic School, she leaves the politics and paper work to Leo though. Paige and Henry are married and raising twins of their very own. Thankfully the twins don’t have any active powers yet because Paige has her hands full trying to teach the students how to use their own powers.

We get a few new characters here and like I said before, until we know the format of how long it takes for each episode it’s impossible to tell how long these characters will stick around; .the Angel of Destiny shows up, but just in a pop in, pop out, kind of way so it’s hard to count that as anything substantial. Billie and Henry are missing in action, although it’s likely we’ll see Henry before Billie since he’s married to Paige. The new characters so far aren’t anything to write home about.

Neena can open portals, only she doesn’t know where they lead and appears to have some sort of fire based powers that she uses to kill Weasel with. Weasel, well what’s to tell? He showed up, he was little, he liked to make sexual advances, he died. Hogan is working with Neena but it’s not clear if he’s a warlock, demon, darklighter or whatever because so far he’s shown no powers at all. There are a couple of new characters given to us from Magic School but the only one who actually gets a name is Jessalyn. There’s nothing really to say about her other than she gets bored easily and is not that good with the magic yet.

So far the plot is pretty standard: Piper, Phoebe and Paige try to balance their real lives with their magical ones and raise magical children (although the children part is new to Phoebe and Paige.) Neena and Hogan are trying to unearth some dark power, no idea what that is yet but the issue ends with both of them in the Underworld where people are being tortured and they’re looking for someone or something.

While it will take a while before I can accurately judge/review the long term plot I can certainly judge the art right now and let me say boy was it a BIG LET DOWN. The art in last month’s “The Book of Shadows” was really good and fitting for the series in general. I ended up getting the cover pictured above and I was psyched, the artist really captured Holly Marie, Rose and Alyssa’s respective likenesses. You looked at them and bam you recognized them instantly; the art on the inside though; yeah, not so much. Paige looks nothing like Rose, or even close enough for it to be recognizable as ‘Paige’ the character. Leo’s brief appearance left much to be desired; I had to reread the page twice before it sunk in that the person I was looking at was supposed to be Leo. Phoebe is a bit better than Paige artistically, but it’s still not Alyssa. To me it kind of reminds me of the art from the Witchblade comics. Coop actually manages to look enough like Victor Webster that it doesn’t bother me too much. Piper is done the best here however that’s because of how much Holly Marie stood out visually compared to Shannen, Alyssa, Rose and Kaley. The problem I have with how Piper is done that she suffers from Witchblade/Darkchylde art. It’s like ‘oh okay, I’m going to pick up this knife right here and cut up a plant but I can’t do it unless my chest is sticking out and my but is pointed directly in your face.’ I get that Charmed was mostly about the hotness of the actresses but I’ve got the dvds for that, let the comic be about amazing art and storytelling.

My fear with the art is that the girls don’t look enough like themselves, not even when they’re all together. They don’t ‘feel’ like The Charmed Ones, it feels like a bunch of girls sitting around on a couch together. I know it would have been almost impossible to do it but I wish the artist put in the girls’ tattoos. At least then you could tell which character was which more easily. Honestly I’m not feeling the art at all and it’s really bringing down the book for me. It takes me out of the world when I have to figure out who is who.

Another problem with the art is the way the pages are structured makes it seem like a very quick read. It took me so long to read “The Book of Shadows” because it pulled me in, both with the writing and the art. But with “Charmed Lives” it’s only 21 pages and out of that there’s one full page consisting of a long shot of Phoebe being ‘beamed’ in while Coop holds baby Prue; on top of that there are a total of THREE two page spreads. So this 21 page issue is in reality only 18 pages of story followed up by a two page spread promoting issue 2 “No Rest for the Wicca” and the rest are two back up stories/previews for other Zenescope books. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the book didn’t cost $3.50. So for fifty one cents more you’re getting exactly one LESS page than any given issue of Buffy Season 8. And this was the first issue, and first issues are usually LONGER than the standard comic.



Rating: C
There’s just not enough plot to rate it on and the art really brings it down for me

Charmed Season 9 Issue 0 'The Book of Shadows' Review

Charmed always had a special place in my heart, not for what it was, and not really for what it wasn’t either but because of all of the things it could be.  When the show was good it was really good and when the show was bad well… it verged on unwatchable.  I’m not going to get into the show too much because if I ever decide to rewatch the show it will be something that’s covered here, so for now this is going to strictly be about the comic book.

Much like IDW Publishing’s Angel: After the Fall (a.k.a. Season 6) and Dark Horse’s Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (currently wrapping up season 8 now, and after a break we’ll be getting season 9) we have an official comic book adaptation and canonical continuation with Zenescope’s “Charmed” (they don’t call it ‘season 9’ but it takes place after season 8 so it’s technically officially unofficially season 9.)  However unlike Buffy and Angel there wasn’t a whole lot of fanfare  or promotion surrounding Charmed’s relaunch.  There was one promotional image teasing with the symbol on the cover of the Book of Shadows and underneath a caption reading “The Girls Are Back Summer 2010.”  A little while after that there was a leaked cover, that thankfully so far has absolutely nothing to do with the actual series (I HATED the art on that, the image on the right is the one I'm talking about.)

The lack of promotion for the comic actually worked out as a plus because the series doesn’t start with issue number one, it starts with zero and is billed as “The Book of Shadows.”  This is really clever because not only does it give us a glimpse at the upcoming first issue but the entire issue is devoted to recapping the series mythology.  The pages are formatted to look like someone scanned a copy of the actual Book of Shadows, it includes the incantation that started it all as well as the etchings and spells that were used throughout the entire series.

There are pages ‘written’ by each of the girls where they talk about everything from their hopes and dreams to their love lives. There’s even a section for Prue!  The book really does cover everything and everyone: Melinda Warren, Patty, Victor, Sam, Henry, Coop, Leo, Chris, Wyatt, Prue, Andy, Cole, Billie and all the main demons too.  Of course they also cover everything from the ‘Up There’ to the Underworld, Magic School and The Hollow and everything and everyone in between. There’s also a section devoted to every single season of the show and the B.O.S. closes out with each of the girls talking about the events that have taken place between the end of season 8 and the start of season 9.

While Charmed #0 “The Book of Shadows” is a great way to kick off the series and to anyone who followed the series when it was on TV can understand how monumental it is to have Prue, Piper, Phoebe and Paige all included in a form of media at the same time; there are a few things that I didn’t really care for.  Sometimes when the girls are ‘writing’ it switches off too gradually and it’s hard to tell exactly which sister is the one doing the writing at the moment.  Another thing that doesn’t sit right with me, mostly because of how much I liked the character is the fact that it is established that back in season 6 when Piper gave birth to Chris while Future!Chris dies Future!Chris’ death doesn’t get ‘undone.’  In this new reality Wyatt is good yet somehow Chris still ends up traveling back in time and dying.  I hope they can find some way to undo this because I really liked the grown up version of Chris.  Two things that I really do love is that Prue is included in this, this implies that somehow Zenescope worked out some type of deal with the rights to Shannen Doherty’s likeness.  Granted it’s a photograph of Shannen, but legally they couldn’t have used it unless they owned the rights to use her image.  I hope this somehow paves the way to Prue visiting her sisters like Grams and Patty do.  Another thing is the fact that Billie is included in the B.O.S. now she was a major part of season 8 and couldn’t be ignored but the fact that she was included in there, no where near as much as Prue, but much more than Cole, Patty, Grams and even almost more than Leo gives me hope that we’ll see Billie in season 9.

Rating: A+