There are some comics out there that for some reason just didn’t get the kind of success they deserved. ‘Leave It To Chance’, the series by James Robinson and Paul Smith, was a huge critical success that won the Harvey and the Eisner Awards for Best New Series in its first year, and yet it only ran for thirteen issues, the last appearing in 2002, seemingly never to be seen again. And yet ‘Wolverine: Origins’ ran for fifty issues. Sometimes there ain’t no justice.
Because the thirteen issues that did run were absolutely fantastic. The series was a high-concept blend of elements from ‘Doctor Strange’, ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘His Dark Materials’, although the series itself predated at least some of these. It concerns Chance Falconer, the daughter of a famous wizard and mystic guardian, who’s eager to follow in her father’s footsteps. Her father, who has been a powerful wizard long enough to know that it’s a hard path to walk and is filled with pain and heartache to spare, forbids her from studying magic. This goes about as well as you’d expect these sorts of things to go, not because Chase is willful or disobedient but because she knows without being told that her father has made tremendous sacrifices for the sake of the world, and she’s mature enough to want to grow up to be her father’s daughter. So she makes friends with a small dragon (yes, it’s shades of Paul Smith’s X-Men run, but the man draws freaking adorable baby dragons, so fuckit) and goes about helping people in her own small way with her own modest magical talents.
The stories are well-written; the character of Chance is charming, and the supporting cast is great as well. (My favorite moment is when the dragon is batting at a computer’s screensaver like a kitten.) The series is collected in two volumes, and I really don’t want to say anything more for fear of spoilers. I will say this, though. When people read ‘Justice League: Cry for Justice’ and wondered just what the fuck happened to James Robinson, they said it because they were all thinking of series like this.
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If I were to read that description without knowing who the writers were, I honestly would have guessed “Mike Carey” rather than “James Robinson.”
Three volumes dude. “Shaman’s Rain”, “Trick or Treat” and “Monster Madness”. Otherwise, +1 to what you said…
That is an excellent question:
What the fuck happened to James Robinson?
He did Starman and this and that Golden Age series that was pretty okay and then…it all went bad.
I think somewhere along the way he became a Jimmy.
James writes great stories with heart, humor and emotion.
Jimmy thinks all that stuff is kinda weaksauce.
For James: Depth, Emotion, Resonance.
For Jimmy: Boobs, Blood, ACTION!
Jimmy Robinson is literally a different writer…
I too recomend Leave it to Chance,it is a great series.
I’m aware that Starman did relatively well in the market. However, one can’t help but wonder if you answered your own theoretical question at the jump. Perhaps the lack of response to LITC caused JR to learn all the wrong lessons and he started second-guessing the public. I don’t have the sales figures, but I imagine Cry For Justice sold a good deal better;so that would seem to ratify the decision he made(in this hypothetical, let me be clear) to pander more to insular fanboy tastes after Chance bombed. Not that I’m bitter or anything…
All that said, You can’t hook me faster on a series than by saying the words”Paul Smith on art”, even though(because?) dude draws people how he looks more than any major(well, in my mind anyway) artist who worked at the Big Two ever.