More of the cast assembles.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mikki Kendall
Art: Ronilson Freire
What They Say:
When everything is going wrong, sometimes the only person you can trust is a complete stranger. Can Miss Fury and Lady Rawhide put aside their differences long enough to figure out what’s really going on?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As I continue to enjoy the Swords of Sorrow event overall I find myself in the right frame of mind for dealing with the one-shots. These books give us the characters that are harder to do as a full on miniseries and ones that you want to include in the big picture but have to be able to introduce in some form to the new readers. While we’ve had some Miss Fury material before we get her once again, this time teaming up with Lady Rawhide. After the obligatory fight, of course. Though I can completely understand how these specials and one-shots may not work for a lot of people I’ve found them to be a pretty decent introduction to a number of characters that I know little or nothing about. They won’t be big players in the main event but they’ll have appearances and I’m enjoying getting to know them more.
With this one we get the familiar storyline running where two separate events re connected that brings together heroes from different times. Here we start with Lady Rawhide in Mexico talking at a party about some changes ahead for the country only to stop an assassination attempt on the new governor that she knows there. Her chase of the perpetrator leads her to a revolving door in the middle of the open landscape – one that connects to 1942 New York City where same said assassin nearly took out someone that Miss Fury was able to save. Suffice to say the two end up back in 1800’s Mexico together and go at it believing the other is the assassin. It’s not an unfamiliar aspect of these books at this point but I like that as the Traveler gets involved he’s mostly ignored by them even as he tries to offer them swords. The two do naturally end up on the same side and deal with the real threat.
That threat comes in the form of Voodoo Childe, who I believe is related to the Chaos side of the works that Dynamite deals with. She’s an unwilling participant of the Prince’s that’s trying to slow him down but has to do his bidding for her own separate goals. Suffice to say it turns into quite a mess in the Mexican desert as the two sides go at it and other forces align to get involved as well – including Purgatori. Ronilson Freire manages to pull it all together well enough but there’s just so much going on in a small space that it becomes overwhelming and not quite as detailed or fluid as it needs to be. Similarly, Mikki Kendall has to get so much done in twenty pages that she’s unable to make it stand out compared to several other standalones that have essentially done the same thing. What we end up with is far too familiar, though it works well enough to make me interested in seeking out future Lady Rawhide books to see what her character is really like.
In Summary:
Though i like aspects of the book, the Miss Fury & Lady Rawhide special is essentially a whole lot of what we’ve seen before. It does bring things closer to where the mainline series is in terms of things about to happen but mostly it’s the familiar introductions steeped in misunderstandings angle. And it suffers from having a lot to do in a short amount of space. While having seen Miss Fury previously, the appeal here is in getting to see Lady Rawhide and now being more curious about the character. Which is a lot of the goal here with this overall event. It’s a book that is, in the end, put together as best as can be with the constraints. Though I’m enjoying the event series itself overall I’ll be glad when they shift away from these and start wrapping it up and get a sense for what’s coming next outside of all of this for some of the lesser known titles.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: September 2nd, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
