3 out of 5

A novel mash-up idea that quite over-stories things instead of just reveling in its mash-up, Tommy Gun Wizards proves to be rather hilariously accurately titled: these are, indeed, tommy gun toting wizards.

Christian Ward’s first solo-scripted title posits Al Capone era cops and gangsters as, instead, warring mages, with some spell-adjacent concoction subbed in for prohibited alcohol. Ward, having started as an artist, has a good sense of page and pacing, and gives it over to artist Sami Kivelä to bring their own style to that: it’s a very clean, Ben Stenbeckness vibe, with added color and cinematic flair that feels like a modern Marvel book; it’s a good balance between the high-concept idea common to DH or IDW titles and, visually, a comfortable “house” style., with neither of these observations meant as insults or reductions, but rather complements of juggling indie and mainstream together.

But: high-concept meets its common hitch (and perhaps that of newer writers as well) within a few pages, when Elliott Ness is introduced with a title card as “Elliott. Goddamn. Ness.” The fun of the idea (and a kinetic opening involving a raid, with spells a’casted) gets rather undermined by this kind of assumptive attitude – cops and gangsters are badass y’all – that’s not readily in the text: that is, the scene where Ness is declaring his war on evil wizards is not inherently badass, but that title card sure wants us to believe it is. Thereafter, the first issue feels overcluttered in jumping around between lore and character setup, to the extent that it’s hard to say what the takeaway is – further confuddled by a backup (written and drawn by Ward) which has no clear connection with the story, and no clear plot, actually. It is an intro to… something.

I return to Ward’s grasp of flow, though, and how Kivelä enables that. The book just looks good, and the confident bravado of its first few pages earns enough credit to carry us through the clunkiness of its back half; there is a quality sense of story and character at work, it’s just kind of buried between over-storytelling. So even without a clear hook for a second issue, there’s enough here to say that the series is going to be worth staying with, while Ward works on his issue-by-issue sense of payoff.