A review by jmanchester0
Swords of Sorrow: The Complete Saga by Gail Simone, Nancy A. Collins, Mairghread Scott
4.0
Dozens of heroines from nearly as many worlds. This was kind of a mind-boggling adventure. The only thing close to this I've seen in other companies is DC's Ami-girl series, and I won't rehash that crap here.
Of course, Dynamite knows that if you want to write believable women, get women writers. Not to say men cannot write women (and vice versa), but you have to know your subject. And that's not always true. (E.g., Ami-girl comics, again, but also Supergirl.)
Some of these characters were a bit obscure, and I had to look them up.
It seems like it took a while to get started. Halfway through the story and the characters were still trying to figure out what was going on. And I can't tell if trying to put everything in chronological order helped or hurt - by breaking up each series and putting it in the order of time where it overlapped with other stories.
This also made stories seem choppy - like at one point, Black Sparrow was teamed up with Lady Zorro in their own comic, but in another issue, she's suddenly with Miss Fury.
And it seemed like Dejah Thoris was simultaneously on Mars and in London.
The stories are good and solid and interesting. The art is great. The action good. But it's almost like they tried to get too big. There's so much going on its hard to get a bead on each story. Or, it jumped around too much, and the story wasn't in order. It may have been the way the story (the issues) was put together in the overall package.
And then it stopped in the middle of one of the stories. I guess there were more than the 413 pages in this book.
I liked what was in here. But it seemed like there was a lot of trouble putting the different stories together. It seems like it was the actual mechanics of the combined stories that made it confusing - not the stories themselves.
It ended with issue #2 of Red Sonja and Jungle Girl - with no issue #3.
And issue #4 or Vampirella and Jennifer Blood - which seems to take place before the actual climax of the story (which is not included in this book), though it seems to be part of the denouement which should take place after the climax. In this copy it takes place after Swords of Sorrow #4. Though it should probably take place after #6. (But there's no #5 or 6 in this copy.)
Thanks to NetGalley and Dynamite for a copy in return for an honest review.
Of course, Dynamite knows that if you want to write believable women, get women writers. Not to say men cannot write women (and vice versa), but you have to know your subject. And that's not always true. (E.g., Ami-girl comics, again, but also Supergirl.)
Some of these characters were a bit obscure, and I had to look them up.
It seems like it took a while to get started. Halfway through the story and the characters were still trying to figure out what was going on. And I can't tell if trying to put everything in chronological order helped or hurt - by breaking up each series and putting it in the order of time where it overlapped with other stories.
This also made stories seem choppy - like at one point, Black Sparrow was teamed up with Lady Zorro in their own comic, but in another issue, she's suddenly with Miss Fury.
And it seemed like Dejah Thoris was simultaneously on Mars and in London.
The stories are good and solid and interesting. The art is great. The action good. But it's almost like they tried to get too big. There's so much going on its hard to get a bead on each story. Or, it jumped around too much, and the story wasn't in order. It may have been the way the story (the issues) was put together in the overall package.
And then it stopped in the middle of one of the stories. I guess there were more than the 413 pages in this book.
I liked what was in here. But it seemed like there was a lot of trouble putting the different stories together. It seems like it was the actual mechanics of the combined stories that made it confusing - not the stories themselves.
It ended with issue #2 of Red Sonja and Jungle Girl - with no issue #3.
And issue #4 or Vampirella and Jennifer Blood - which seems to take place before the actual climax of the story (which is not included in this book), though it seems to be part of the denouement which should take place after the climax. In this copy it takes place after Swords of Sorrow #4. Though it should probably take place after #6. (But there's no #5 or 6 in this copy.)
Thanks to NetGalley and Dynamite for a copy in return for an honest review.