You want to save the universe? Time to call in the right women to do it.
Creative Staff:
Story: Gail Simone
Art: Sergio Davila
What They Say:
Fan favorite GAIL SIMONE (RED SONJA, BATGIRL) and rising art star SERGIO DAVILA (LEGENDERRY) combine to tell the ultimate pulp adventure, featuring Vampirella, Dejah Thoris, Red Sonja, Kato, Jungle Girl, and many, many more! Villains and heroes from a dozen worlds and eras face off against a legendary evil that threatens all their homelands. Don’t miss this thrilling epic tale, an event supported by one-shot side adventures written by the hottest writers today, like G. Willow Wilson, Marguerite Bennett, Nancy Collins and more!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a good mix of characters at their disposal, Dynamite Entertainment has put together what should be a pretty fun event overall with lots of well known characters coming together for the first time in this form. Swords of Sorrow comes from writer Gail Simone and artist Sergio Davila as it finds a solid way to create interactions across time and space. For many, it’s just a chance to see their favorite character doing something that they normally don’t do and just run with it in a kind of silly situation overall. While I expect things to ramp up as it goes along, part of the appeal here is that it’s the kind of series that really does want to have fun as opposed to be mired in some really heavy and intense material. It’s not that it doesn’t have serious elements to it, but it’s not taking itself too seriously.
The opening installment does have the heavy lifting to do as one would expect in introducing the main cast at this stage. It handles it well across the first few pages where we get the quick hits with the Jungle Girl, Red Sonja, Vampirella and Deja Thoris across their respective realms. What’s important here is that it does take the time, in brief, to acquaint the reader with who is who, where they are and part of their larger world rather than just throwing the reader to the wolves and telling you good luck – which too many events do. Here, we see the individual threads, but then the connections, such as Deja Thoris coming across a massive stone statue of Red Sonja that has come through a hole in the world, according to some of those creatures that exist on Barsoom. It’s a great little segue that builds up what kind of weird happenings are starting to occur, and their connections elsewhere.
As it goes on, it turns a good bit of its focus on that of Jennifer Blood and Kato, as the two are going back and forth in their own same time period as they’re similar but on different sides of things at the moment. While they provide the action, they also get the formal invite to save the world together. This incident is carried over after that with the others as well, with people that are seemingly of their own respective time periods coming to offer gifts with swords and promises of the need of them for the bigger things that are coming. With all of this being orchestrated behind the scenes at the moment, as we get a male and female opposing power looking to set their own course for the universe, that helps to bind it all together, but the start here is all about introducing the characters as their own separate entities, establishing them, and putting them in positions to move forward together, albeit unknowingly. Giving us a taste of their opponents at the very end works wonderfully as a tease too.
In Summary:
The opening installment of this crossover event of Swords of Sorrows definitely does a lot of things right. With a lot of big scale events going on across the comics world these days, and over the years, I’ve read far too many that simply start wrong. While the big hook and threat here isn’t truly cemented in a way, there is a threat and it’s made clear what it is and the stakes involved. The main focus though is in bringing these very different women together into one book and giving each of them enough time to be well realized enough to move forward and expand and utilize them in an engaging way. What we get are some good story hooks with a range of characters that I’m mostly but not completely familiar with, but now want to read more about. Though they’re largely kept separate here, we can see how it’s going to flow and really collide upon first impact and then even more so with the other side as they get their due. It’s setup for a solid and engaging run here that has me excited – particularly as Sergio Davila really captures the look, feel and tone of each of the characters. With the variety here and their own settings, that’s not always easy to do in a consistent way to make the worlds feel different but connection. It gets done though and that definitely makes this worth checking out for that alone. I’m definitely coming away from the first issue intrigued.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: May 6th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
