THE MAGICAL EDUCATION OF TIM HUNTER By Cardinal Cox
	A twelve year old boy, wearing glasses, receives an education in magic and seems destined to be the mightiest wizard Earth has ever seen. Sound familiar? Except the year is 1990 and the writer is Neil Gaiman. Neil's series, The Sandman, had started to be published by DC Comics in 1989. In hindsight it looks as though he wanted a short spin-off series to explain his ideas of how magic worked in the DC Universe and how his characters (such as The Endless) fitted there-in. For this, he and co-creator John Bolton brought together four of the comic company's mysterious 'heroes' (even though some would dispute that title). These were Dr. Occult (created 1935), the Phantom Stranger (created in 1952), Mister E and John Constantine (created in the 1980s), the latter recently played by keanu Reeves in a movie. In this initial four-issue miniseries of The Books Of Magic, Tim Hunter is shown the past, present, future, and the world of Faerie. This allowed Neil to weave together various villains and situations from the vast range of DC Comics (even Superman gets a mention). The four-part series also states that various cults of evil magicians want Tim for their own nefarious plans. Plans which may include, when Mister E takes Tim into his possible future, a war of magic. mister E, sensing the fate which may befall the young Hunter attempts to kill the boy himself. Mister E came back in a solo series in 1991, attempting to return to the present from the distant future. This four-part series was written by well-respected science fiction author K.W. Jetar and did include a Tim hunter in the series final showdown - however, this Tim was different from the one we had seen before. We had to wait until 1994 to see Tim Hunter again. Neil gaiman plotted a cross-over for the DC/Vertigo titles, starting in December 1993, entitled Children's Crusade. this mix of the historical children's crusade, the legend of the Pied Piper and sundry other stories shifted to a contemporary milieu included, in its penultimate chapter, the Arcana Annual number 1, written by John Ney Rieber. This was a prelude to the first issues of the ongoing series, The Books Of Magic, which appeared in May 1994... Tim is now 13 and into his life comes Tamlin, a human from Faerie, who might be his real father. Oh, and his real mum might be Queen Titania... Shortly, we shift to 2012 and a world in which Tim has become an all-powerful tyrant, assisted by (or, perhaps, controlled by) a confectionary obsessed demon called Barbatos. We also get to meet Molly O'Reilly, a schoolfriend of Tim's and destined to be very important in his life. We also discover that the day of the death of Tim's human mother is the same as my birthday - a fact perhaps only of significance to me! Meanwhile, King Auberon of faerie gets imprisoned in a Victorian factory under London, Circe now runs a tattoo parlour in Soho, and Tim's step-dad gets remarried, lumbering Tim with an odious step-step-brother. Some critics complained that the series was slow, while others pointed out that it was using a broader canvas to discuss deeper issues. While the domestic issues may not have appeared to hold the same gravitas as of heaven and Hell, for Tim they were as important! By mid-1996, Tim had had his fourteenth birthday and runaway to America. here Cupid was trying to live the gangsta lifestyle and while in the desert he met a mermaid. At the same time, Molly was trapped in Faerie, earning the wrath of Titania. The following year saw two spin-offs from Books Of Magic. the first, Books of Faerie, covered the history of Queen titania and was written by Bronwyn Carlton. the second, a Hellblazer/books of Magic crossover, was written by Paul Jenkins and reunited the British magicians. Reminiscent of Leon Garfield's novel, The Ghost Downstairs, Tim shows that he has learnt much from his occasional tutor. Tim, at the start of 1998, is despairing over how rotten much of his life has got, and, in an attempt to avert escalation in the war between Heaven and Hell, gave away his magical powers. Of course, it doesn't help! In 1998, Bronwyn Carlton wrote a second three-issue series of the Books of Faerie, this time focusing on King Auberon. From issue 51 of the main series, Peter Gross, who had been the main artist of the series, became the writer, too. So, in September 1998, Tim and the odious Cyril were sent to private school. Danger, though, in the form of another Tim Hunter from an alternate world (and possibly the Mister E series) appears. He has been killing the Tim's of every world so that he can capture their magic. the Tim of our world, after his family falls apart, hides between worlds. One of the best seqeunces of this period, I think, is when Cupid joins the Wild Hunt. Also in this period, Molly got her own four-part series in the Books Of Faerie, a welcome return for writer John Ney Rieber. At the final showdown between the two Tims, Barbastos, the demon who controls a possible future Tim, makes his reappearance. So, in issue 75, August 2000, the Books of Magic came to an end... One of the problems with comics is that characters, if they age at all, tend to do so slowly. John Constantine is rare in that he ages in real time, but he is an exception. After ten years, Tim was still only fourteen... In the new mini-series, The Names Of Magic, by Dylan HJorrocks and Richard case, tim is sent to a school of magic. First though, he has to get in, and various forces are, as usual, rallied against him. When, in  September 2001, the new series, Hunter :  The Age of Magic, starts with tim leaving the White School, he is now seventeen. This school exists simultaneously on many worlds and on some of them, evil forces still want to destroy Tim. he gains an ally in kalesh from gemworld (a world from an early '80s DC fantasy comic). Then, back on this world, Tim once again has to battle the forces of evil (do they never learn?!). Then he re-meets his old girlfriend Molly, now studying art in Paris and trying to forget about Tim, claiming that her own adventures never happened. In September 2003, this series came to an end with Tim and Molly reconciled but certainly not together. A year later, Tim was back in a new series, this one called Books of Magick :  Life During Wartime. This incarnation was devised by neil gaiman (now a respected novelist) and Si Spencer (who had previously been a scriptwriter for Eastenders!). As this series starts, Tim (now 18) and Molly are happy together in London where they enjoy many a night out with the brother and sister Dog (a punk) and Cat. However, this London is on a world that has never known superstition, religion or magic. On another world, a war rages between demons, fairies and humans. This is a world where a John Constantine and Zatanna are attempting to locate some missing Books of Magic that might call The Hunter into their world to tip the balance in this eternal struggle. (Zatanna had appeared occasionally in previous series, as shje is a semi-regular character in the DC Universe. Her father, Zatara, had first appeared in 1938 in the same comic as Superman. Zatara had died when John Constantine saved the Universe in Swamp Thing in the mid'80s.) Doubtless bad things will continue to happen...