Here it is, my first negative review of 2025, as early as January.
I first stumbled upon 'Conspiracy of Ravens' in my local library, and then I heard it being described as "Sailor Moon meets Edgar Allan Poe". Now that is an interesting combination and idea.
I'd love to see how it would actually look, because 'Conspiracy of Ravens' isn't it.
Instead, it is a huge mess.
It's a shame, because 'Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon' has pretty much shaped my entire personality and brain since early childhood - it is one of my biggest fangirl obsessions, and that's not even doing it justice - and I can never resist anything to do with Magical GirlsTM. I also love ravens, and my goth girl side will always have an admiration and appreciation for Edgar Allan Poe.
'Conspiracy of Ravens' is British, too; another reason it seemed made for me.
The plot, in its most basic, unravelled, core description, is:
Fifteen-year-old British boarding schoolgirl Anne Ravenhall has inherited a mansion and estate from her great-aunt, whom she never knew existed until her death. Also from Anne's great-aunt is a locket with a magic stone with a bird on it, that Anne can summon ravens from, and the birds - the conspiracy of ravens - transport her to places. There are other girls in her school, plus girls founded on the outside, with bird stone family heirlooms that give them powers. These mark them as descended from the female members, themselves descended from a legend of a king and a white raven woman, of a supernatural and scientific secret organisation/rookery/dissimulation/superheroine squad, solving spooky cases like Scooby-Doo.
It's a whole lot of weirdness and stuff that makes no sense. Such as:
Everyone is just cool with it? With magic and the supernatural existing? No one appropriately freaks out and has major life crises? They just take it in stride? No one laments about not having a normal life anymore? In being in constant danger and having enemies try to kill them?
Anne Ravenhall, who represents the corvid bird raven (obviously), barely reacts to the first time her locket glows and ravens suddenly appear and carry her off in the middle of the night. She's fine with it all, immediately dismissing the idea of her dreaming it. There's no attempt at rationalising any of it.
One of the magical dissimulation bird girls, Jenny, who represents the jackdaw, is even thrilled by it. She's ecstatic. She can jump high from buildings, perform gymnastics in the air, and is super fast like Sonic the Hedgehog, and she isn't the least fazed.
Hell, one magical girl from the outside, Emily, representing the magpie, is contacted online by Anne and her friend Rebecca, or "Binky", and Emily instantly drops everything to see them and join them in the secret dissimulation headquarters in Anne's great-aunt's old mansion. She takes the whole supernatural spy business in stride, too! Believing everything these complete strangers tell her, in this highly likely kidnapping situation! Emily makes the magical girls' costumes a couple days later. How would she even know them well enough to know their sizes?!
Presenting chatrooms in a positive light, and believing strangers on the internet and going out to meet them just like that - what a fantastic message for a middle grade graphic novel to send to kids!
The closest human reaction to the magic crap happening is Felicity, the jay of the group (her surname is also Jay, *sigh*, and Jenny is Jenny Dore, *heavy sigh*). Felicity is a popular girl at the boarding school, and at first she refuses to have anything to do with the bird girls, wanting normality. She is the spoiled, classist, stubborn, princess type, and yet I like her more than the other girls, because she is the most realistic and believable out of all of them. But she isn't given nearly enough page time and development for this to mean jack(daw) diddly.
As far as I can tell, Binky is not exactly a member of the dissimulation, as she isn't descended from any of the previous members, nor does she possess a bird stone heirloom. Despite this, she is a member and magical girl, just like that, no questions asked. Is she the crow, the "intelligence" bird, then? Or is that one of the previous dissimulation group's automatons, called Crow? Oh yeah, there are automatons in this "magical-girls-meets-Poe" story. It's... it's a lot. A lot of random, ill-fitting ideas crammed in.
Anyway, Binky has no magical powers, but she is smart, and a librarian and a good researcher and investigator, making her a valuable asset, regardless of bloodline. But still, no thought whatsoever to how she fits in in this conspiracy of ravens?
Does this mirror Binky's place as a scholarship kid at a boarding school full of rich girls? Is it connected to how she had to earn her position instead of inheriting it, without relying on life's cheat code and net safety of privilege? No comment is made on this aspect to Binky's character. Nothing is alluded to it. It is possible that any nepotism-vs- earning-through-hard-work subtext and parallels are accidental.
On that note, the rich girls who bully Binky for being on a scholarship are truly pathetic. Like their parents' money makes them better and superior to her. It is always better (for society) to be a scholarship kid than a trust fund kid. Take that crap on capitalism.
Anyway, another question:
Who is William Adder, the snake man who wants the mansion and magic stones? Where did he come from? How does he know about the stones? What exactly does he want with them? World domination? Are there other snake people - multiple snakes transforming into one human - like him out there? Are there other supernatural animal people out there? Why is no one concerned about this? Why is no one asking these questions?
Additionally, what about the other men who are looking into the mysteries of Anne's great-aunt's mansion, who don't work for the snake man? Are they the police? The military? MI5? MI6? A rival secret intelligence organisation? Insurance salesmen!? Why are they suddenly trusted by the dissimulation by the end? The main man, first introduced at the beginning, is a "Colonel" Barnabus, but that's the most we'll ever know about him. Barnabus and his force only appear in, like, seven pages tops, and they don't do anything! We don't know who they are or what they do or anything!
I know I am being rather vague about 'Conspiracy of Ravens', and I will try not to spoil its ending - but really, all this is because I am confused and don't know what's going on in the comic. I don't even know what happened at the end! It's so rushed and weird.
Like, in the past, in the early 1900s, the magical dissimulation spy organisation also had automaton members. Sentient automatons that are so advanced they speed past steampunk and into a future in technology we can't even begin to imagine yet. Are they powered by magic?
How do magic and science and technology work together in this book? It's random and hokeypokey.
It's lazy writing, and lazy worldbuilding; worldbuilding that is so haphazard it seems to exist like barely-standing, crumbling pillars, and scattered scaffolding, not able to hold up the story and characters and character motivations much longer.
One example of bad, random worldbuilding detail is: near the beginning, Binky researches and explains the legend of the king and the white raven, which is the foundation of the magical girl/spy/superhero dissimulation (and its mansion and headquarters are where the king's castle once stood). The story goes: the king is given a magic crown by his beloved white raven queen, that he uses to defeat his enemies. The crown seems to be important, but then it is bought up only once, and never again. It's just the (corvid) bird stones (from the crown? So what's the significance of the "magical crown" itself?) containing the white raven's magic that are presented as the ultimate power for the magical girls, and they are what drives what plot there is.
The girls' individual powers aren't fully utilised, either. Especially not at the anticlimactic ending. Some of their potentially very useful powers are outright forgotten about. Felicity's mind reading abilities? Never brought up again after it is introduced. Emily's glamour to make her look like different people? Same. It's not mentioned again. She makes duplicates of people, and shows illusions and flashbacks (I think?), and that's it for her usefulness, except in the costume department.
Even the action scenes are badly edited and confusing. For example, before the first major battle, inside the mansion, and out of the secret dissimulation headquarters - a battle where the magical bird girls first let their powers combine/combine their W.I.T.C.H. Guardian powers/do a Power of Three spell/form a Sailor Senshi group attack on the bizarre snake man - Anne falls through a door and lands somewhere outside. She says, "What happened? Where am I?"... None of those questions are ever answered. The next time we see Anne is four pages later, where she is suddenly inside the mansion again and is attacking the snake man with her whirlwind of ravens, with no indication, no explanation, of how she got there, or where she'd been.
What is with these decisions? Was the comic made up via mad libs as it went along?
Oh. I almost forgot: There's a scant-existing side romance between Anne and Jenny's brother, Michael. They see each other once, and boom, instant attraction. It's as generic and unnecessary as you can get. Nothing would be lost if it was cut.
The possible development of Michael finding out about the girls' dissimulation is dropped and goes nowhere, further cementing his character's pointlessness.
On a related note, 'Conspiracy of Ravens' has no overt LBGTQ+ representation in the slightest. This modern, magical girl power graphic novel has nothing sapphic in it. How disappointing. I shake my head and wag my finger at 'Conspiracy of Ravens' for its generic, safe mediocrity.
Not helping the meagre diverse rep is Felicity, the only POC character in the whole book, and she's the spoiled mean girl and steadfastly reluctant outsider of the magical girl group. We never see her wear Emily's costume; Emily makes her one, it is in a box... that never opens. We never see it! It's yet another detail that's forgotten about. Sucks for Felicity to be the odd duck out of the flock!
Okay, now onto the positives:
The artwork is nice, cute, and serviceable, with its blue, white and black colour scheme. Though the action scenes are often drawn as haphazardly and half-arsedly as the plotting, and whilst reading, sometimes I couldn't tell the characters apart.
My favourite character is Eve, the dissimulation's housekeeper/butler/driver/information automaton. She's hilarious, upbeat, smiley, and interesting, with an interesting history, as she's worked for the past dissimulation. Pity that not a lot of that history is revealed to the reader. Eve is supposedly an emotionless android, programmed to perform the bare minimum, a glorified maidservant, but she clearly cares for the girls and their wellbeing, as well as taking care to keep the secret of the dissimulation safe. The inclusion of a running gag where Eve is a fast and reckless driver of a very old car makes her stand out exceptionally. It says a lot about the other characters that she is the best and most developed one.
Wait--wait a minute - how the hell can another dissimulation automaton character, Crow, visit one of the girls in her dreams? Is it magic? When Crow's entire character is trying not to use magic? WAIT--SHE WORKS FOR COLONEL BARNABUS?! SINCE WHEN? HOW?! WHY?!
AAAARRRGGHHH!!!!!!!
My head hurts when I try to make sense - and heads, tails and wings - of this comic.
Every little, forgotten and abandoned detail in it makes my face flush in indignation. Like, on the first page, why is Binky so flippant about mock exams? She's on a scholarship, she should feel the pressure; feel compelled to take all schoolwork seriously and study harder than anyone! And why does she talk about Anne having an awesome private tutor? We never see that tutor, and, you guessed it, it is not brought up again.
So much happens, and details, big and small, about the magical girls' personal lives are revealed. But they are arbitrary, and mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, and by the end of the comic. Resolutions to problems are either rushed, or are made nonexistent. So they don't flesh anything or anyone out properly. They are erroneously wiped clean from the slate.
As far as anyone knows, the small comic is a standalone, so the excuse of "It'll come up and be developed and possibly resolved in the sequel", doesn't cut it.
It seems the writers hardly cared.
'Conspiracy of Ravens' is an underdeveloped, frustrating mess.
I don't like to negatively criticise and put down another content creator's hard work, which managed to get published - by a big, renowned publisher like Dark Horse Comics, no less. That's a miracle in of itself. But I'm sorry, I have to be honest. I find 'Conspiracy of Ravens' to be not very well executed in its premise, and it screams wasted opportunity and potential. The planning and plotting are confusing, capricious, helter-skelter, and erratic, and most of the characters are unmemorable, underdeveloped, unsolid, airy-fairy, and bland.
Sadly, this Magical GirlTM product is a dud to me.
I could end this review on an Edgar Allan Poe quote, or a mention of the ever-classic "Nevermore". However, since 'Conspiracy of Ravens' in fact has nothing to do with everyone's favourite gothic poet, I won't bother.
It'll be me alone, Artemis Crescent, Magical GirlTM connoisseur, cackling, cawing and crowing, not screeching, screaming or crying as it's not worth it, using my depleting critiquing powers, and magical stone and crystal powers, and finally, tapping out.
I am free. As a bird, a raven, in the night sky, the crescent moon and stars behind me.
Final Score: 2/5
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