The final battle.
Creative Staff:
Story: Gail Simone
Art: Sergio Davila
What They Say:
IT ALL ENDS NOW. The planet-crushing finale to this epic crossover ends here! With a key player down for the count, can the remaining warriors (and their Swords of Sorrow) hold the tide against Purgatori and the other CHAOS women, AND the Prince of All Dimensions as the universe collapses around them? Featuring the greatest pulp heroines of all time in the adventure no one ever imagined could happen!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Swords of Sorrow comes to a close with this installment of the main series and it’s been a fun ride. You can easily get away with reading just the main series itself and its six issues, all of which seemed to have hit on time, and not really missed much of anything. You lose some nuance and some connections that form between the characters, but you could just read this and run with it. Having read all of the supporting miniseries though, there are ones that I think you’d miss out on and enjoy, but if you were just looking for the core story you could easily get it. And that’s important in this age of overblown crossover events that have been going on since the early 90’s.
With the finale here, it’s really all about the action for most of the main twenty pages of it before the two page epilogue section. This works well in a way because it’s a fast read yet one you can pore over a second time in order to enjoy Sergio Davila’s artwork. The man has captured the look and flow of a large array of characters well and while I think some of the coloring of the book muted out aspects of it, for the most part it really works out well. There’s a good sense of chaos amid the action, the movement, and the shifts between locations with the panel layouts, but it adds to the nature of the book with events happening rapidly in different places as the various generals hold back the Shard Men that are looking to get Snow White.
There is a good focus on the main three of the prophecy here though, which is to be expected. A lot of the cast gets their brief moments, but it comes down to them needing to stop the prince. Of course, there’s a spanner in the works with Vampirella really dead and I dislike the way it was wrapped-up post-battle, but it does give Red Sonja and Dejah Thoris a chance to shine together. Sonja tends to play well with most others so getting them together worked well. And bringing all three together for the finale, as expected as it was, has a good sense of power about it. Granted, I think the book could have used more time with just everyone hanging out and shooting the breeze so that we got to know them better outside of an action context, but these characters all performed quite well together and the end result we get here has it feeling like each of them really stands tall on their own and together.
In Summary:
While I thoroughly enjoy Gail Simone’s work in general, I didn’t go into Swords of Sorrow with high expectations in terms of story simply because I could see what it was. It’s a series that takes the opportunity of bringing together a range of female characters from across a number of books and time periods and throwing them together in different combinations. It’s all working towards the end goal of defeating one person and it does it well. The core series has a good smoothness and polish to it that kept it flowing and engaging so that you felt like you were on top of things even if you didn’t read the supporting books. It’s a solidly done work, but it’s also one that doesn’t really bring something new to the table for the characters as they all return to their books and stories, most likely without a mention of this event for the most part. But what this series did succeed more so in is in that it had a whole lot of fun. Not every supporting book was solid, but the concepts were there and the characters are infectious. It’s an exposure series for characters that really needed it because there’s such a great range here beyond the main ones. There are a lot of these pairings and single characters I’d love to see more of going forward and I’m far more likely to try now, which makes the project a success for the publisher.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: October 14th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
