It’s time for a brave new Gold Key world.
Creative Staff:
Story: Ray Fawkes, Kyle Higgins, Chuck Wendig, Aubrey Sitterson
Art: Johnny Desjardins, Jorge Fornes, Alvaro Saraseca, Dylan Burnett
Colors: Mohan, Chris O’Halloran, Triona Farrell
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
What They Say:
The beginning of an epic tale that will change everything you know about some of comicdom’s greatest and longest-tenured heroes! Solar, Magnus, Dr. Spektor & Turok! Apart, they’ve saved countless lives a hundred times over. Together, they form a team that has protected the world in the past, present and future. Now, they will be reunited one last time to face a threat that will forever change their legacy and bring them face to face with their final destiny!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I continue to have a weird affection for a lot of the Gold Key work. Not because of the original Gold Key books themselves, as I could never get into them and they just felt weird and not of “my time” when I did read them, but my interest stems from falling for them when Valiant worked on them in the 90’s. Dynamite has done some interesting things with them over the last few years, though not exactly meeting with huge financial success, but I continue to be glad that they’re trying to find a way to bring these characters to new audiences. Similar to John Carter: The end, Sovereigns is looking to put a new spin on the characters and try something different, moving forward about two hundred and fifty years from now to paint a particular ending picture before launching some separate books that engage with the present for viewers.
With a low price of just a buck for a full thirty pages of material in an oversized issue, Sovereigns serves to introduce some of the basics and then segues into a few pages of teases for upcoming books. The bulk of the book is focused on the year 2250 where we’re introduced to two stories. One focuses on Samson as he’s on a quest in what remains of San Francisco and it’s through him that we get the narration, which is even a bit too verbose for my tastes to some degree. What the bulk of it focuses on is Turok, however, as he rules over a valley that’s full of peace. There are nods to other familiar names here such as a robot from the Magnus side and all, but it’s mostly about showing how Turok has set things to protect people so that something of humanity can survive. We see that a new threat has arisen, which he’s dreamed about, and he’s about to ride off into battle for the first time in years, but it’s a formless opponent at the moment, meant more to tease you into the ongoing series itself.
With that as the meat of the story, the three backup pieces are interesting in that they showcase the other series that are coming. A few pages for each, we see the 2017 tale where Doctor Spektor is using magic to make rent as a young man in Brooklyn. Turok’s tale takes place in 2017 as well where he’s hunting humanoid dinosaurs that are riding other beasts of burden as he’s looking for a young woman, presumably his daughter. And we see a Magnus story where in female form the character is hunting digital personalities from toys and the like that have tried to escape those physical forms into the cloud. That has a lot of interesting potential itself and has me curious to see what changes are afoot for the character that has seen many interpretations as of late.
In Summary:
The Sovereign’s is the kind of book where there’s a whole lot of potential to work with if the creators – and the publisher – really takes a chance with it. The stories here are interesting enough and have plenty of potential that I’ll certainly dig into the first couple of issues of each because I do enjoy the characters and how malleable their stories can be. I’m not sure it’s the best kind of introductory issue for a lot of things but it should be given some space simply for the fact that they’re offering it up at a loss basically with it costing just a buck. That makes it worth checking out as you may find something really interesting in it. And with a good slate of creators involved there’s definitely a lot to be interested in.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: April 5th, 2017
MSRP: $0.99
