What do you think?
Rate this book
MIND MGMT #4
MIND MGMT, Volume Four: The Magician
The second half of Matt Kindt's MIND MGMT epic begins with just as many questions as the first! Meru is back on the team, but can she ever trust Lyme again? What role did the Magician play in the Management's history of the 1960s through the 1980s? And what is the secret of the Seven Immortals? This brain-bending new collection features new characters, shocking twists, an astonishing "silent" issue, and--at last--the life and times of Henry Lyme!
Collecting: MIND MGMT 19-24 & material from Dark Horse Presents 31
Collecting: MIND MGMT 19-24 & material from Dark Horse Presents 31
168 pages, Hardcover
First published November 25, 2014
5 people are currently reading
297 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
August 18, 2016
Oh my... Hmm, I just see that my review of Mind MGMT Vol.2 already started with those very words, but what can I do: ”Oh my” happen to be the two words that best describe my experience of this wonderful series, sue me. Seriously, Matt Kindt is awesome, and Mind MGMT is his magnum opus! Then again, the guy is only 43 years old, who knows what else he still has in store for us...
Anyway, this fourth volume adds still more characters and layers and subplots to an already mind-boggling story, and at this point you gotta wonder: How complex and ambitious can a spy thriller possibly get? It’s a giant labyrinth of secret agendas and their intended and unintended consequences, a hallucinatory tapestry of philosophical, political and psychological plot threads.
And yet, Mind MGMT doesn’t feel pretentious or frustrating to me at all. It is vague and disorienting as hell, no doubt about it, but the thing is: The story's unmanageable, almost insane complexity is the perfect fit for its secret organizations and their ominous, often contradictory attempts at manipulating the course of history. Getting lost is what the story is all about.
Make no mistake, Mind MGMT is not the kind of comic book you can read on the side. Even though it refuses to provide the pleasures and payoffs most comic-book readers take for granted, it demands your full attention. And gets away with it! Brilliant stuff.
Anyway, this fourth volume adds still more characters and layers and subplots to an already mind-boggling story, and at this point you gotta wonder: How complex and ambitious can a spy thriller possibly get? It’s a giant labyrinth of secret agendas and their intended and unintended consequences, a hallucinatory tapestry of philosophical, political and psychological plot threads.
And yet, Mind MGMT doesn’t feel pretentious or frustrating to me at all. It is vague and disorienting as hell, no doubt about it, but the thing is: The story's unmanageable, almost insane complexity is the perfect fit for its secret organizations and their ominous, often contradictory attempts at manipulating the course of history. Getting lost is what the story is all about.
Make no mistake, Mind MGMT is not the kind of comic book you can read on the side. Even though it refuses to provide the pleasures and payoffs most comic-book readers take for granted, it demands your full attention. And gets away with it! Brilliant stuff.
September 27, 2017
Kindt is losing me a bit here. There are too many plot lines and endless characters.
He also keeps reiterating old stories from different views.
I wish he’d just get to the point of it all.
He also keeps reiterating old stories from different views.
I wish he’d just get to the point of it all.
June 10, 2019
The storytelling has gotten more obtuse and is losing me, not out of a lack of desire on my part. I just can't always tell what's going on or keep track of the 97 characters in the book at this point. The story keeps flashing back from multiple view points or from different time periods and it's not always clear what I'm supposed to be picking up from this. There was a silent issue that seemed largely meaningless to me. But there's only 2 more volumes and I'm intrigued enough to stick with it.
July 16, 2018
Still, for my money, one of the best depictions of psychic powers in comics. I think I may have made a tactical error in waiting so long between volumes on this. While I can follow the story well enough, there are all sorts of subtle touches that I’d probably appreciate better if they were fresher in my mind.
Meru, Harry, and the rest continue to attempt to recruit former Mind Management personnel, but they may be causing more problems than they’re hoping to fix. As always, scan the backgrounds and page borders and so on, because you never know what you might find. This volume even features a Mad magazine style fold-in. I didn't actually fold it since this was a library book, but years of reading Mad have trained me to visualize the result fairly accurately.
I need to try to get to volume 5 in a more timely fashion, but there's a modest pile of library books to be gotten through first ...
Meru, Harry, and the rest continue to attempt to recruit former Mind Management personnel, but they may be causing more problems than they’re hoping to fix. As always, scan the backgrounds and page borders and so on, because you never know what you might find. This volume even features a Mad magazine style fold-in. I didn't actually fold it since this was a library book, but years of reading Mad have trained me to visualize the result fairly accurately.
I need to try to get to volume 5 in a more timely fashion, but there's a modest pile of library books to be gotten through first ...
August 31, 2018
Okay, so the art is still great, the action is awesome and the characters are still interesting. I did have a few minor complaints about this volume but my main one is that I’m at that point where when it comes to the story I’m just staring at it kind of puzzled.
I mean, a lot of people already got to that point in the first volume so considering the series only has 2 volumes left, I’m gonna go ahead and say I did a good job at mostly understanding it until now. Now I still kind of understand it but am getting confused.
Still enjoyed it too so yeah, will be continuing this series.
4/5
I mean, a lot of people already got to that point in the first volume so considering the series only has 2 volumes left, I’m gonna go ahead and say I did a good job at mostly understanding it until now. Now I still kind of understand it but am getting confused.
Still enjoyed it too so yeah, will be continuing this series.
4/5
February 5, 2017
This series is just so well done!
December 19, 2014
The longer this series runs the less interested I am in the characters and world
April 6, 2016
Illusion is the theme, and Mr. Kindt went way above my expectations. Mind-blowing, and I don't usually use that phrase.
Addendum/PS: Is it just me, or are most of the negative reviews more indicative of the readers' interests and limitations than of the actual quality of the book? If your only interest is in clear-cut, linear stories, stay away from clearly experimental work such as this.
Addendum/PS: Is it just me, or are most of the negative reviews more indicative of the readers' interests and limitations than of the actual quality of the book? If your only interest is in clear-cut, linear stories, stay away from clearly experimental work such as this.
July 21, 2017
Well, this book definitely doesn't go where you would expect it to. Meru and her compatriots try to recruit the powerful Magician, but things go horribly awry, and the repercussions are much worse than you would expect. This volume also recounts some of the Management's activities in the late 20th century. Mind MGMT is not particularly reader friendly - the text in the alley and the tendency to under-present its content makes it a lot of work. It had been over a year since I read the previous volume, so I spent a fair bit of time trying to remember exactly who could do what (and some of the characters look too similar). There's a lot of action in this volume, and a lot of story, and if I had been more invested in the characters, it probably would have gained another star.
Read
March 17, 2023Similar to the last book, jumbled storytelling prevents this one from soaring. If it weren't for Kindt's art and the affecting final two issues, I'm not sure I'd continue. More agents are introduced, more layers are added, and I'm not caring as much anymore. Still, issue 24 is probably the best of the series so far.
October 30, 2020
The raw creative energy on display here continues to impress.
July 30, 2021
Больше нелогичных ходов, по-прежнему крутые иллюстрации.
Готова ко второму прочтению.
Готова ко второму прочтению.
December 30, 2021
Арт с каждым томом становится всё прекраснее, и повествование на нескольких слоях уже как родное. Но сюжет тут какой-то проходной, а флэшбеки про Лайма — скучные. Может, Киндт просто готовит площадку для следующего тома?
Я прочитал этот комикс для обсуждения на подкасте про научную фантастику «Худо Не Было». Послушать можно тут: https://share.transistor.fm/s/663a8faf
Я прочитал этот комикс для обсуждения на подкасте про научную фантастику «Худо Не Было». Послушать можно тут: https://share.transistor.fm/s/663a8faf
March 10, 2015
Utterly incomprehensible.
October 24, 2016
Um Vol 4 a este nível faz de Kindt um dos autores mais interessantes da actualidade.
May 15, 2022
(Zero spoiler review for the omnibus collecting this volume) 2.75
I found myself mostly frustrated with this one. There were times when I was sucked in to the (fairly simplistic) storytelling, although for the most part, it was rather vague and uninteresting. You could tell that Kindt was really stretching the legs on this series, trying to get as much mileage out of it as he could, and it shows her rather frequently. I believe I complained during the review of book one, that Kindt's simplistic (there's that word again) art style really detracts from the storytelling, and that is certainly true here, too. Though I did find myself slightly more drawn in to his unique, yet basic style, though its still the watercolours that give it whatever lustre it manages to attain. Small praise aside, I find the characters mostly bland, and difficult to follow. Kindt's dialogue and narrative flow don't make for the most connective or discernible of reads. Half the time I had little to no idea what was going on, and not in a good way, either. As I stated at the start of this review, there is frustration and appeal throughout this story, although frustration usually wins the day, which sadly keeps this from being anything more than average. If I knew what I knew now, I doubt I would read it, and I certainly wouldn't pay for it. Here's hoping the best book is the last one, at least. 2.75/5
OmniBen.
I found myself mostly frustrated with this one. There were times when I was sucked in to the (fairly simplistic) storytelling, although for the most part, it was rather vague and uninteresting. You could tell that Kindt was really stretching the legs on this series, trying to get as much mileage out of it as he could, and it shows her rather frequently. I believe I complained during the review of book one, that Kindt's simplistic (there's that word again) art style really detracts from the storytelling, and that is certainly true here, too. Though I did find myself slightly more drawn in to his unique, yet basic style, though its still the watercolours that give it whatever lustre it manages to attain. Small praise aside, I find the characters mostly bland, and difficult to follow. Kindt's dialogue and narrative flow don't make for the most connective or discernible of reads. Half the time I had little to no idea what was going on, and not in a good way, either. As I stated at the start of this review, there is frustration and appeal throughout this story, although frustration usually wins the day, which sadly keeps this from being anything more than average. If I knew what I knew now, I doubt I would read it, and I certainly wouldn't pay for it. Here's hoping the best book is the last one, at least. 2.75/5
OmniBen.
February 21, 2019
Have you ever wanted to simply start over? By starting over, I mean beginning from fresh, forgetting your old life completely. That's the Magician. She carved a new life and identity for herself and got a man to love her. Life was perfect. That's until Meru gets into the picture. If you were previously running from the Eraser (that moniker is so nefarious) but Meru and her gang destroyed your life, which side would you choose? We all have to choose sides.
Admittedly, I was a little lost with Volume three and I wonder if reading it again will give me some insight, or if I'll simply have that emptiness of trying to grasp something that may not even be there--I guess you can't actually read Kindt and hold onto a fixed idea or solid meaning. Volume four gave me a character to connect to, the magician, who deceives the world in many ways. We all are masters at deception by necessity but through the character of the Magician, Kindt argues that people can only really deceive themselves.
I'm excited to read the final two volumes and hopefully funds will allow that to happen soon-
Admittedly, I was a little lost with Volume three and I wonder if reading it again will give me some insight, or if I'll simply have that emptiness of trying to grasp something that may not even be there--I guess you can't actually read Kindt and hold onto a fixed idea or solid meaning. Volume four gave me a character to connect to, the magician, who deceives the world in many ways. We all are masters at deception by necessity but through the character of the Magician, Kindt argues that people can only really deceive themselves.
I'm excited to read the final two volumes and hopefully funds will allow that to happen soon-
August 11, 2019
Matt Kindt continues to impress with creative story telling and a unique art style to comics, creating beautiful yet intriguing images while elaborating a world truly his own.
Volume Four offers a bit of an interlude per se. The reader learns about other agents back grounds, while the main protagonists learn of what repercussions may lay waiting in their future, for interfering in the lives of reagents who have tried to move on with their lives.
Kindt's imagination breathes incredible life into Mind Management, however his story telling style can often come across as so different, that a reader may find themselves lost, while others will likely find it brilliant. All of Kindt's stories are creative, but most are fairly straightforward. Mind MGMT can be straightforward at times, but because a large part of the subject matter centers around illusion and redirection of the minds of the characters, occasionally the reader will have to take a moment to back track, just to keep up.
Volume Four offers a bit of an interlude per se. The reader learns about other agents back grounds, while the main protagonists learn of what repercussions may lay waiting in their future, for interfering in the lives of reagents who have tried to move on with their lives.
Kindt's imagination breathes incredible life into Mind Management, however his story telling style can often come across as so different, that a reader may find themselves lost, while others will likely find it brilliant. All of Kindt's stories are creative, but most are fairly straightforward. Mind MGMT can be straightforward at times, but because a large part of the subject matter centers around illusion and redirection of the minds of the characters, occasionally the reader will have to take a moment to back track, just to keep up.
June 14, 2020
Glancing through the reviews, it seems I'm not the only one who felt like some cracks are beginning to show in this volume. It's not bad by any measure, but my rating is probably kinder than it would be otherwise because of how totally engrossed I am in this series by this point. We're now into the second half of the tale and answers are still slow to come, though some of the earlier revelations get extra screentime for some odd reason. More mysteries are introduced and it's starting to feel a little bogged down by its own weight. Kindt also gets experimental with some of the issues, some to great effect, others left me confused by what was going on. Adding additional illusionists to a story that is already foggy probably wasn't the greatest idea. Still, some of the extra time spent on characterization was appreciated as proceedings up to this point have been very much plot over character.
January 10, 2020
The conflict between the Eraser and those who want to restore Mind Management against those aligned with Henry Lyme and his supports escalates further with more and more former agents being forced to choose a side, one way or another. And this is best represented by the titular character of the Magician, who was happy to live her own life away from Mind Management. But to have Lyme awkwardly try to recruit her was the final straw that pushed her out of neutrality.
It's not clear which side is the "good" one, assuming that there is a good side here. There's just more and more complications as the tensions mount and the clashes between the groups become more violent.
It's all highly compelling drama that at its core is strikingly human despite the presence of superhuman abilities and other fantastical elements.
It's not clear which side is the "good" one, assuming that there is a good side here. There's just more and more complications as the tensions mount and the clashes between the groups become more violent.
It's all highly compelling drama that at its core is strikingly human despite the presence of superhuman abilities and other fantastical elements.
November 8, 2017
Another volume. Another arc. Not much interested in exploring any thoughts beyond what is already covered in the synopsis. I am rolling with the story and seeing where it takes us. Tricks have taken a back seat to the story and I am more interested in the story at this point.
The magician refers to a character who can cause illusions and cloud minds. It is possible that most of this volume will turn out to be nothing but a mirage.
The magician refers to a character who can cause illusions and cloud minds. It is possible that most of this volume will turn out to be nothing but a mirage.
August 29, 2019
I much prefered the story in this volume compared to the last one. It was still a basic "could write it in a sentence plot" with lots of fancy stylistic narrative choices and character-building parts, but there was a definite change in status quo by the end of the volume - the previous volume had left me wondering what the point was.
Art continues to be amazing, Kindt continues to take full advantage of the comic medium, this continues to be a confusing but fantastic series.
Art continues to be amazing, Kindt continues to take full advantage of the comic medium, this continues to be a confusing but fantastic series.
July 30, 2021
Volume 4 introduces more complications and a dynamic parallel story structure that really worked for me. The mystery seems to have coalesced now and we're getting a good mix of characters and events as things go along.
The fuzziness of life and death and agent skills makes for complex nuances in the story, but overall, this one was better than the last. Continuing to enjoy the series wholeheartedly.
The fuzziness of life and death and agent skills makes for complex nuances in the story, but overall, this one was better than the last. Continuing to enjoy the series wholeheartedly.
May 21, 2017
Man, I don't know. This used to be one of my favorite books, but it just gets harder and harder to read. Every time I pick up a new issue I feel like I must have missed an issue. Meru and Lyme put a team together, but none of them ever use their powers, they just hang around and bicker, and then they die. The end.
September 27, 2017
Finalmente Henry Lime ci parla di se e dei suoi poteri, che lo rendono una delle risorse più importanti per la Mind Mgmt. Numero fondamentale, raccontato molto bene, il che compensa egregiamente la solità brevità eccessiva. Intanto gli inseguitori di Lime arrivano al loro obiettivo.
May 21, 2019
This one was pretty confusing, and intentionally so. Overlapping stories in various frames, cutting through and across. And I dislike the lines on the edges of pages but they make up part of the story. I read it a second time and it made much more sense.
September 29, 2019
Now I'm really starting to question where this book started to the point I'm leaning toward the story is just being made up as it goes along. In other words, it's still really good, but I'm doing more "wait a second here..."
October 21, 2019
The magician is one of the series' operatives that complicates the plot. The complication is not so much in terms of story but of sheer illusionary confusion that she brings to the pages. Confusing at times but nonetheless, a solid book.
December 15, 2016
this series is fantastic and I am inhaling it's lines and illustrations as quickly as I can. I have nothing negative to say. I already look forward to rereading this series in the future.
June 22, 2017
Well, Kindt certainly has no qualms about killing off characters, that's for sure.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews