A Comic Book Team-Up of Mystic Proportions

Cover for Tarot #1. Comic book cover by Paul Renaud.

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Credits:

Writer – Alan Davis

Artist – Paul Renaud

Colors – Paul Mounts

Letterer – VC’s Clayton Cowles

Cover – Paul Renaud

Variant Covers – Alan Davis, Morry Hollowell, & David Nakayama

Graphic Designer – Carlos Lao

Assistant Editor – Shannon Andrews Ballesteros

Associate Editor – Alanna Smith

Editor – Tom Brevoort

Editor-in-Chief – C.B. Cebulski

SPOILER-FREE ZONE

Tarot #1 is a fun comic book. It’s the first of four parts in a miniseries. As the cover implies, we get to see both the Avengers and the Defenders work together against one common foe. The comic book is focused heavily on mysticism, so we get to see a good bit of Doctor Strange. The art is better than decent. If you’re looking for a decent miniseries, you can’t go wrong with this book!

END OF SPOILER-FREE ZONE

You are now exiting the spoiler-free zone. Do yourself a favor and stop reading if you don’t want any spoilers.

The book begins in a flashback during WWII. Captain America, Prince Namor, and the Human Torch are surveying the remains of a battle. Dead allied troops are strewn-about but there’s no sign of the enemy or weapons even being used. It turns out that some Nazi has gotten a hold of a mystic power that lets him turn inanimate objects into his living army. He sends an army of statues against the three superheroes.

They all get overwhelmed by the statues when suddenly Captain America turns into the Hulk! He demolishes the statues, which eventually can’t hold Namor or the Human Torch either. Steve Rogers reverts back to his old self, unaware of what happened. This is when it cuts out of the flashback and it turns out that Namor is daydreaming about this memory. He immediately recognizes the memory as something new and suspect.

Cyrus Black has used the Infernal Ichor of Ish’izog to take control of a large group of humans. He has also been lead to believe that he has the upper-hand over The Defenders. It turns out that Doctor Strange was using himself as bait and was two steps ahead of Black. Namor, however, recognizes the runes on the possessed humans to be the same runes he saw in his ‘memory’. They were on the possessed statues.

Doctor Strange bests Cyrus Black and removes the Infernal Ichor of Ish’izog from the possessed humans. He can’t banish the Ichor itself and must keep it contained because there is still part of the Ichor that he hasn’t captured. He is able to track the Ichor down to the Avengers’ Mansion. When the Defenders arrive, the Avengers are trying to contain Vision, who has gone berserk. We later find that this is due to a villain named Diablo. He has used the remaining Infernal Ichor of Ish’izog to create tarot cards of the Avengers. With these tarot cards, he is able to control them.

With the Avengers attacking the Defenders, Diablo reveals he has enough of the Ichor to make one more tarot card. I will not spoil who he takes control of with that last card. Buy the comic book and find out!