If automake 1.12.x is not installed, pythonmagick fails to build. Adding WANT_AUTOMAKE="1.12" to the ebuild will fix this. Reproducible: Always
I ran into this same issue just now. The recommended ebuild change works for me.
13 Nov 2012; Ian Delaney <idella4@gentoo.org> pythonmagick-0.9.8.ebuild: Antiquated sed statement removed from src_prepare correcting runtime import failure, latest automake version added to DEPEND, fixes Bug #437422, thanks for reporting to Chris Mayo
+ 23 Apr 2013; Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org> pythonmagick-0.9.8.ebuild: + Better fix for automake dependency