Neil Gaiman The original mini-series concentrated on Timothy Hunter's introduction to the world of magic by the
Trenchcoat Brigade (the
Phantom Stranger,
Doctor Occult,
Mister E, and
John Constantine), who are aware that the boy has the potential to be the world's greatest magician but that his allegiance to good or evil is undecided. Equally, he could turn from the world of magic completely and be lost to either side. The Trenchcoat Brigade see it as their duty to resolve the uncertainty around Tim's fate one way or another. They take him from the birth of the universe all the way through to its eventual death, ostensibly teaching him about the possibilities - and the price - of wielding magic before he decides whether to embrace his destiny. Along the way, Tim meets some of the DCU's more prominent magicians and fantasy characters, such as
Merlin,
Zatara,
Doctor Fate,
The Spectre,
Madame Xanadu,
Doctor Thirteen,
Zatanna,
Dream, John Constantine,
Cain and Abel,
Destiny, and
Death, whilst his allies try to protect him from the machinations of the Cult of the Cold Flame. Following his misadventures, Tim decides that the price is too high, only to find that everything he has learnt from his supposed mentors has made it impossible for him to turn away from magic. this revelation first appeared in a gaming guide to the
DC Universe, possibly misinterpreting a scene in the original miniseries where Titania refers to Tim as "my son". Rieber's run also contained several stories about the need to stay connected with the world that they live in. Several of his characters, including Tim, seek to avoid their problems in the real world by escaping into fantasy, but Rieber later explained that "wishing never solves anything in the Books. Have you noticed? At best, it gets you into trouble. About the only thing you can do in the Books that's more dangerous than wishing is surrendering to fantasies that others have constructed".
Relationships and tattoos Gwendolyn decides to stay and look after Tim while his father makes a miraculous recovery at the hands of the strange Mister Vasuki, eventually returning home after sharing a taxi with a young mother and her son Cyril. Tim learns that he is an "Opener" and has unconsciously been making his fantasies real all his life—whether they be simple imaginary friends or entire worlds—Tim introduces Molly to some more of his imaginary friends made real, Tanger and Crimple, who live in a tree on some wasteland near Tim's house. The wasteland opens out into an entire magical world created unconsciously by Tim's childhood fantasies, but as Molly is exploring it with Crimple she ends up being kidnapped and taken to Hell. Tanger and Tim head into Hell to rescue Molly and Crimple, who are being held by the strict governess Miss Vuall, the trainer of the multiple Mollies who are Sir Timothy Hunter's docile and dutiful companions. Sir Timothy, however, no longer needs the girls, as he has succeeded in releasing himself from Barbatos' control, only to be persuaded by a gang of
dragons to become one of them because of his sadness and self-hatred. Molly and Crimple best Miss Vuall, and as Tim arrives the two children's love puts the finishing touches to her corner of Hell. Barbatos drags the children and the dragon Sir Timothy into another layer of Hell, where he attempts to salvage victory from defeat by trapping the two children in a
fairy tale world where brave knights kill dragons. Following Molly and Tim's disappearance, both find themselves grounded and banned from seeing each other. Molly manages to sneak out and ends up around a camp-fire discussing Tim with Marya and a mysterious tattooist who says she wants to help. The tattooist demonstrates her experience of both men and magic when Marya is again threatened by the arrival of Daniel: she removes the black soot that has transformed him, and changes him into the animal his soul most suits - a slow-witted but loyal puppy, that Marya happily adopts. Molly tells her companions about Sir Timothy Hunter, unaware that Tim has transformed himself into a cat and is listening in. The tattooist is aware, however: she traps Tim in his cat body long enough to take him to her home and thoroughly examine his soul, intending to do the same to him that she did with Daniel. She has to change her plan when she is shocked to discover that Tim has no "inner animal" and that he is just a normal, healthy teenage boy. Instead, she offers to give him a tattoo that will stop him from ever hurting Molly: Tim agrees, and gains a moth/scorpion hybrid across his chest that stings him whenever he gets angry or performs magic. Soon after, Gwen decides it is time to move on when Tim's father begins a tentative relationship with Holly, the woman from the taxi. Almost immediately, Holly's son Cyril becomes a target of a demon's malign interest, and rescuing him helps Tim to decide that his presence is putting those he loves at risk. He runs away. Tim, meanwhile, is living rough on the streets when he is taken in by a homeless magician who knew his father. The magician provides the proper environment for Tim to let his tattoo come alive and leave him: it separates into its scorpion and moth parts and fights, with the moth destroying the scorpion. Tim is about to accept the moth back onto his heart when the magician distracts him, but the tattoo still manages to return to his arm. Following his experience, Tim decides that what he needs is a mentor to teach him about magic and sets off for America to find
Zatanna. Molly and Prince have been joined by Titania's otherwise loyal flitling Yarrow, and have decimated the kingdom. Worse, Molly manages to unenchant Prince to reveal that he is in fact Titania's son and the heir to the throne: Prince has spent most of his life in Hell, given to the lords there in payment of a tithe originally agreed by Huon. In truth, Faerie is not a kingdom of its own, but part of Hell that
Lucifer offered to the Fair Folk when they first left the Mundane World. Lucifer's will and belief created the realm. In revealing Prince's true nature - which Titania had attempted to hide to stop the Lords of Hell discovering that he had escaped home - Molly brings the armies of Hell to Faerie, demanding reparation or battle.
Angels and visitations Although Tim thinks he is finished with magic, magic is not finished with him. Returning home with the fallen angel Araquel — who had previously been tricked in to breaking his chains by Barbatos — Tim finds that the armies of Heaven and Hell are fighting each other to a standstill in the mortal world. The prize they are fighting for is the magic that Tim released into the world, which would give them the power to recreate the world to their own design. Molly, too, was to be less important to Gross' run — Tim is first warned to stay away from her by her protective brothers and then Molly herself decides to have nothing more to do with him after meeting his Other and mistaking him for Tim, thinking that he has broken his promise to never speak to demons and is well on the way to becoming Sir Timothy. Gross responded to "nearly everyone" asking if Molly was going to return by explaining that when he was asked to take over, John Ney Rieber had specifically asked for her not to stay in the comic and although this request was later withdrawn Gross thought it fitted the story he had plotted and made Tim more central to his own comic if she wasn't used. There was a spin-off ongoing series planned for her but was abandoned with the death of Vertigo editor
Lou Stathis. Molly would return in the series
Books of Magic during war times. Gross' first story arc, then, dealt with Tim settling into Bardsley school and meeting Thomas Currie, a man who had traveled through various worlds searching for the true Tim to either prepare him to defeat his Other or kill him to prevent the Other stealing his power. Currie took advantage of the disappearance of a teacher at Bardsley so that he could take his place and interact with Tim, Tim makes a deal with Cyril to stay away from Bardsley in exchange for his stepbrother not telling Bill and Holly what Tim is really doing, getting private lessons in magic from Mr Currie to help him face his Other. Tim, however, is unaware that his Other has already arrived in the true world, causing a traffic accident that injures his father and Cyril and kills his stepmother, Holly. This causes Currie to go onto a war footing: he kills Tim's father whilst he recovers in hospital to give Tim the emotional trauma he needs to subconsciously create another alternate world, and then manipulates the outburst of magic so that instead of a new world, Currie's version of Tim is recreated. The teacher then drains Tim's magic and hides it in a prearranged place: the true Tim leaves the world to learn how to control his magic and defeat his Other, whilst Currie and his alternate Tim remain to die in battle with the hope of convincing the Other that he has killed the true Tim. When the Other was convinced that he was triumphant, he used his power to open all the gateways between the worlds, allowing Tim to escape to the Inn Between the Worlds using his mother's glamor stone to disguise himself as a girl called Mary but also freeing the Wild Hunt, the god-killing band trapped for two-thousand years by a compact of rulers from Heaven, Faerie, Hell and other realms. Living as Mary and working at the Inn, Tim becomes best friends with a girl called Joh, but a relationship complicated when she sees him as Tim and falls in love with him, forcing Tim to admit the truth. The two are forced to flee, when the Wild Hunt are manipulated by a disguised Auberon into hunting Tim and destroying the Inn, a fate which Tim avoids only by challenging and defeating the leader of the Hunt. He then returns to Earth to reclaim his magic and defeat the Other to reverse the damage done in opening all the gates between the worlds. In order to defeat the Other, Tim needs the help of the demon Barbatos, which can be achieved by selling a memory to the demon and sealing his fate as Sir Timothy Hunter. Tim faces up to his responsibilities, and sacrifices his future: Barbatos takes the memory of Tim's creation of his Other, making it impossible for the Other to exist separately from Tim and the many separate pieces of Tim are reunited for the first time in his life. Tim's soul is immediately forfeit to Barbatos, and he becomes his slave but sets in place the chain of events that eventually leads to the demon being defeated and trapped in the Dreaming. The final issue showed Barbatos released forty years later and allowed to return to hell. Once free, the demon discovered the true nature of Tim's apparent defeat: the boy had hidden his soul inside the memory Barbatos took and once inside the demon it slept, slowly taking complete control of Barbatos' body until Tim owned it completely, remodeling it with his magic to resemble his own at the age of fourteen. The final image of the issue, and
The Books of Magic, showed Tim whole and complete, finally grown-up and ready to face whatever challenges the future held with "no more whining". ==Related works==