Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Dresden Files - # 1 Storm Front (Graphic Novel 1-4)
by Jim Butcher, adapted by Mark Powers and illustrated by Ardian Syaf

This Graphic Novel covers the first part of the book "Storm Front" that introduced Harry Dresden, a modern wizard who's set up shop in downtown Chicago. Dresden is called upon to determine how a double homicide, a bloody murder in which two people's hearts exploded out of their chests! Murphy, a female Chicago police detective needs Dresden to help them figure out if this could have been done supernaturally. Along the way, he runs afoul of a Chicago mob boss, a brothel-owning vampiress, an acid-spewing demon, and ultimately a drug-selling practitioner of the dark arts.

Harry is in bad standing with the White Council that governs wizards because he survived an incident in which he killed someone in self-defense using magic. He is under the Doom of Damocles in which if he breaks any rules, he will be executed. This makes his present situation a bit touchy. He is working a case involving the use of deadly magic that requires Harry to reconstruct the original spell in order to identify the murderer. If his watchdog who loathes him catches him performing an inkling of dark magic, he will be obliterated. Feeling he has no choice, Harry soon finds himself on the abyss by the dark magic he encounters.

Because this is a partial collection of a comic book it will be awhile before we see the conclusion to the story. But it is a decent adaption of the book. I need to go back and re-read it to compare.