With its latest wave of titles, Vertigo seems to be returning to its roots: literate fantasy stories, and revivals of lesser-known DC characters.  This time, it's Matt Wagner and Amy Reeder Hadley working on Madame Xanadu. 

I've never heard of Madame Xanadu; from what I can glean from Wikipedia, she's some sort of fortune teller and supernatural adviser, who used to be the Lady of the Lake.  However, this is an origin story, so we're starting back in Camelot.

It certainly looks wonderful.  Amy Reeder Hadley's art has a wonderful delicacy and charm to it.  If everyone looks rather clean and pretty in this pseudo-medieval England... well, it's Camelot, isn't it?  I'm not going to let that spoil my enjoyment of some pretty pictures.  Visually, it's a home run.

The plot, on the other hand, is standard fare; the fall of Camelot is imminent, and Nimue (our heroine) wants to stop it, while being intermittently hassled by the Phantom Stranger.  And then there's the dialogue.

You see, this is the sort of story where people say things like "Grant me this boon, oh generous elm!" or "A frail talent compared to your powers, oh mage!"  And frankly, it gets rather wearing over the course of an issue.  The high point of the issue is a thoroughly entertaining scene where Nimue's cynical sister mocks her wishy-washy tree-hugging.  This is genuinely funny, and shows some self-awareness.

But at the same time, it flags up the big problem here: Nimue is just rather irritating and over-earnest.  She feels like the sort of person you would regret inviting to a dinner party.  When the villain shows up to make those sorts of points, I'm not quite sure how to interpret it.  Has Wagner completely missed the mark?  Or is this some sort of foreshadowing where he's flagging up her grating naivety?  After all, it is an origin story - this is her starting point, and the direction of the plot suggests that it all falls apart.

If I knew more about the standard depiction of Madame Xanadu, I could probably make a more educated guess about whether she's likely to stay this irritating.  As it is, I'm left in two minds.  There are bits of the issue that I really enjoyed, and the art is gorgeous.  But... she's so irritating.  She talks to elms.

On first reading, the bad massively outweighed the good for me.  The more I think about it, though, the more I'm starting to wonder whether Wagner might be heading somewhere more interesting that you'd initially suspect.  I'm hesitantly willing to give it another couple of issues to show its hand a little more, largely because I like the art. 

Rating: B

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