A chaotic close to the first volume of the Swashbucklers saga.
Creative Staff:
Story: Marc Guggenheim
Art: Andrea Mutti
Colors: Chris Sotomayor
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
What They Say:
Reunited with crewmembers thought lost, Raader makes her final stand on Earth. Old friends and new, brought together in an epic showdown that will affect the galaxy forever!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
It’s been interesting getting back into the world of the Swashbucklers after it had ended so long ago and given a chance to extend some things, wrap up others, and forge a potential new path for the property. While there are things that should just be left alone there are properties that have meaning to a lot of fans that can be opened once again. Marc Guggenheim largely worked it well over the course of the run even if it did jump a bit too awkwardly at times in order to get things done, and I really enjoyed Andrea Mutti’s artwork in taking the familiar older characters and breathing a new life into them while expanding with more locations and characters.
As one can expect with a final issue of a miniseries, there’s a lot of action here – in South Carolina. The arrival of the group following Raader to Earth to help out plays well as there’s so many of the Sidari to fight against that it’s just chaotic. There’s a lot going on and Mutti definitely keeps it moving well even if there isn’t a lot of actual repercussions from all the fighting – at least beyond Sidari being taken down. Everything is just ramping up more and more with the tension as Reagan is ready to nuke the area in order to deal with invaders, which feels fairly on point, and that serves about as well as you’d expect. It’s fun in its own way because it has a kind of classic 80’s camp about it in how quickly it moves and what it does. It doesn’t resonate strongly or create any memorable scenes because the time and distance involved between the prior work and this one is too great, but it gets close.
The fallout from all of it moves in typical 80’s fashion as well once Raader digs deep into her abilities not used in forever and eliminates the Sidari that are invading. The debrief is comical in how the government lets everyone go, not that they’d easily hold them to begin with, and then the rebuild of the Sidari ship to get back home happens largely off-panel and seemingly quickly. More time is spent on the emotional goodbyes that I can’t quite connect with even with the refresher the last time around with our Earthly characters but I like that it gets wrapped up smoothly and largely problem free as it gives Raader a new crew to work with that involves some pretty competent folks. Granted, the trip home goes off the rails as you’d expect but it sets up where a potential sequel can go.
In Summary:
While there are some uneven elements to this series they’re the kind that’s only going to feel natural in trying to bring to life a series that’s been dormant for a couple of decades. Keeping it ot the same time period, characters, and roughly style and approach as the original means it’s going to feel a bit out of place even as you try to shift gradually to other storytelling methods. Guggenheim and Mutti did a solid job with it but it also ran through things pretty fast and shifted gears to a larger scale of events that I’m interested in but was just too much to cram into this run. I’m likely to come back if there’s more but I’m hoping it’s able to really figure things out more so that it’s not as uneven next time around.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: August 29th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
