This first issue is, sadly, the only issue of Chad Agamemnon. Creator Nowak wrote and drew the book for the Ann Arbor Public Library and, whatever the arrangement, it wasn’t feasible for the book to continue.
A bummer, because it’s charming as all heck.
The titular Chad is a young wizard in exile, cast to the mortal realm, where people either don’t believe in magic or are completely indifferent to it (well, there’s the single dude who’s indifferent to it, everyone else is unaware). Chad’s got some binding bracelets to keep his powers down, which means he has to do things for himself.
He goes to live at a co-op with a bunch of other teenagers slash adult young adults and has to do things like help cook and weed the garden and be pleasant to his new roommates. He comically fails at all of it, sometimes because he can’t utilize his magic, sometimes—the times with the roommates—because he’s just a dick.
We get some insight in what’s brought him to Earth, with him composing a letter to his father in his head during a walk around—natch—Ann Arbor. Turns out Chad was just as big of a dick back in magic world but he’s trying to make friends. It helps someone offers him a bratwurst because they don’t have bratwurst in magic land.
The issue ends on the morning of Chad’s second day in the house, with a profoundly lovely scene between Chad, one of the roommates, and her guinea pig. See, Chad still can still communicate with familiars so he’s able to get the guinea pig’s real take on things. What makes the scene ever more interesting—and why it’s too bad there isn’t a follow-up—is the roommate can’t know Chad’s using the magic communications, so she’s going to think its his message, albeit with some cushioning.
There’s not a lot of detail to Nowak’s art—they’ve got a heavy brush and the art has a great flow.
Like I said… real bummer this one didn’t get to continue.
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