As one threat mutates another arises.
Creative Staff:
Story: Marc Guggenheim
Art: Andrea Mutti
Colors: Chris Sotomayor
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
What They Say:
Facing the consequences of your actions is not always easy to do, as Raader is about to learn. She must come to grips with the way she has upset the balance of power, but even more devastatingly, how she has affected the lives of her crew. Meanwhile, a devastating and ancient force rears its ugly head to fill the vacuum of power!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Having vague memories of the original series from so long ago, or perhaps just reading about it, I’ve been pretty happy with how well Marc Guggenheim has been doing in two issues now in wrapping up and tying plot points from the end of the last run and moving things forward in this one. It’s perhaps not deep or meaty but it gets the job done as the focus starts to take shape. It continues to look good as well as one of my favorites with Andrea Mutti handles the art duties and we get a lot of fun things with the look of the ships, the backdrops in space, and just some of the world design. It’s a solid pairing and it has a “swashbuckling” space pirate feel in all the right ways with a throwback kind of quality.
Raader’s journey would normally feel pretty done at this point after what happened outside of some regrouping perhaps, but now it feels like the real mission is ahead. The surprise arrival of a Colonizer dreadnaught puts everyone in a bad spot but it ties nicely to the original series where what Raader had done had inspired a rebellion on the homeworld where the Queen was killed – by Black Bess, who lost her own life in the moment – and now the military is under different control. It’s a surreal kind of thing for Raader to handle learning, particularly as she never views herself as anything more than a captain and a pirate. To find that you’ve inspired a rebellion that took down your overall enemy? Surely the back of her mind is just thinking of ways to exploit this, if she can survive this new gauntlet she faces.
That gauntlet has the revolutionary commanders wanting her to come back with some implied hopes of her taking a leadership role because there is nobody truly running the Colonizer Empire at the moment. It’s kind of comical (and not really workable as a story point in reality) but I like that she sticks to her own path and just wants to get drunk and get into some fights. It’s trite, perhaps, but it shows again where she feels most comfortable, the things she’s struggling with – particularly after a visit with Logik and his cowardly ways – as well as showing another piece of her newfound power and just how utterly dangerous she could be in the future. Of course, that’s all put in place because of a new ancient threat that’s returning after a millennium away so it’s obviously convenient when I’d rather see her putting a ship together and seeing if her comrades survived beyond the Cloudwall.
In Summary:
The continuing saga of the Swashbucklers is something that feels a bit out of place in the current comics market but that’s also a big part of its appeal. It’s keeping to the events of the past without rebooting or remaking it and is sticking to the tone and style for the most part as well. Guggenheim is tapping into the storytelling of that era and this property while Mutti captures some of the design elements while bringing his own into it as well. The result is a very fun book that’s light and engaging with a lot of potential for a great space opera that doesn’t look like it’ll weigh down the reader with something deeply intellectual. That doesn’t mean it’s just dumb fun but it fits more to the title with a swashbuckler’s life, just one caught up in huge galactic events.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: May 2nd, 2018
MSRP: $3.99