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SAM ZABEL AND THE MAGIC PEN is many things. It’s a rumination on depression and how it affects the creative process. It’s a swashbuckling space adventure. It’s a trip through myriad artistic styles and themes. It’s also a commentary on an artist’s responsibility to his work, and how many comics include over-sexualized females to cater to male fantasies.

SAM ZABEL is all these things and more. But it’s also rather tepid. In trying to accomplish so many things, the author, Dylan Horrocks, leaves the reader wanting more. But with the main character being whisked away to a new local every chapter or so (or multiple times in the same chapter), the reader rarely gets to enjoy the world that Horrocks has created.

"One of the questions the book raised is what, if any, responsibility artists have to the characters and worlds they create. Whatever the answer may be, Sam Zabel deserved a little more than he got."

The premise is an interesting one: through time, there has existed the Magic Pen. Sometimes it was a brush, sometimes a pen, but it has existed through all of history. Whatever is drawn with the pen can become real if given the breath of life. What that means in terms of the story is that characters can enter comics and other works of art by breathing on them, and then experience things in that world. It starts with Sam Zabel, a depressed cartoonist who is obviously a stand-in for the author, accidentally sneezing on a rare New Zealand comic and being transported to the world of “The King of Mars.”

It’s a wonderfully realized 1950s futuristic view of the red planet, where Captain Errol Rose has crash landed and is forced to make his way among the red-skinned men of Mars. This is where the real story begins: where Sam learns about the Magic Pen and what it can do.

The problem is that it takes the book a long time to get there. It’s not until almost a quarter of the way through the book that Sam starts traveling to unique comic worlds. The beginning is spent with Sam as a struggling artist. He can’t come up with ideas for “Lady Night,” the comic he is scripting for a big publisher. He had past success with his own comic, “Pickle,” but now he’s coming up dry. It’s obvious he’s suffering from depression and it is affecting his work. He thinks that if he can just create something good, it will get him out of his blues.

Sam is obviously a fill-in for Dylan Horrocks, who created his own comic, “Pickle,” before working on “Batgirl” for DC Comics. In that regard, the story is something that many creative types should be able to relate to: sometimes it’s hard to put pen to paper and make something. Sam’s funk has been going on for almost two years, though.

The art in the book is well done. Horrocks is adept at changing the style from scenes on Mars involving Sam to the pages of “The King of Mars” that he’s reading. The comic he reads looks a lot like small-run comics from the ‘50s would: muted colors, plain faces and lots of editorial comments in the panels.

It’s unfortunate that the story never coalesces into something bigger. Sam saves the day, of course, but it’s somewhat unfulfilling. It’s possible that Horrocks tried to do too much by fitting the entire story into one 200-page volume, which is a surprisingly quick read. It may have been better suited as a multi-volume release.

One of the questions the book raised is what, if any, responsibility artists have to the characters and worlds they create. Whatever the answer may be, Sam Zabel deserved a little more than he got.

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