Creative Staff:
Story: Gail Simone
Art: Sergio Davila
What They Say:
The wildest Dynamite crossover epic ever told continues at whole cities are smashed together in the prelude to inter-dimensional war! It’s Martians versus Monsters versus Barbarians and more, with the women of Chaos on the wrong side of Good Vs. Evil…plus, where are Red Sonja, Vampirella and Dejah Thoris in their worlds’ time of need? Guest stars galore in this massive tale of battle, blades and bikinis!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While one can easily follow the main Swords of Sorrow storyline, I’ve been taking in all of the specials and enjoying them for what they are. Knowing that part of it is to bring together different and similar characters and expose readers to ones they may not know, there’s been that mild sense of them not being as connected and important as they can be. What they’ve mostly been is fun while reading in support of the main series here. With this installment, the majority of those miniseries connect to events here and if you’ve followed them, seeing everyone slowly come together for the mostly full team reveal definitely has a great sense of payoff about it.
With this fourth installment, as we cross into the second half of the events arc, things are starting to come to a head with what’s going on between the Prince and the Traveller. The Traveller is getting ready to act herself with what’s going on, taking up one of the original swords and preparing to deal with the Prince, and that gets the Courier a chance to ask what’s really going on after knowing and serving her for centuries. Interestingly, we get a bit of a Snow White story here, revealing a twist on how that tale ended, as the Prince took the Witch’s power and tormented her for what she did to Snow White. That sent Snow White into hiding, refusing to be with someone like him, while the Witch ended up fleeing herself as well, only to become The Traveller. This added context may not be game changing, but it provides some good weight and context for the larger fight going on and provides an access point for the reader to her as well.
With the rest of the players out in the worlds, they’re confronted by Purgatori for the Prince in order to get them to either just give up or change sides. That obviously doesn’t work and instead they mostly get focused on trying to find the trinity of Red Sonja, Dejah Thoris and Vampirella, so they can fully commit to fighting the Prince and the group he’s raised. This means lots of two page pieces that connect to the miniseries, providing quick connections in bringing them on board, going from Barsoom to the jungle island and more. It also brings in those like Jungle Girl and Irene Adler to the main book, boosting the overall numbers in the fight. It’s a solid gathering of forces installment and there’s definitely some solid banter to be had here. But mostly it’s just seeing all of them finally coming together like this that sells it because they’re all so firm in their resolve, even with only so much information at hand.
In Summary:
The story here advances in a few different ways, very much needed ways in fact. What we get is some background context to the larger fight at hand which in turn makes the Traveller a much more accessible character. And that’s quite important overall to making this feel more real in a sense. The fun part of the book though is seeing all these different groups coming together, initially with this little oddball ragtag group that feels like they’re way in over their heads only to beef it up with more arrivals of real power and note. But having read most of the supporting miniseries, you know the powers and abilities of most and how well they can factor into the larger fight, making me hope that as many of them get their chance to shine as possible as the real fight gets underway.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: August 12th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99