Swords of Sorrow is a six-part mini-series written by Gail Simone, that brings together all of the Dynamite’s best heroines into one story. The mini is a time travel story with a twist that each heroine is given a sword in preparation for battle against a prince that wants to bring chaos to the world. In the first issue, Simone lays out the cast of characters that will be involved in the story and the list is very impressive. Just to name a few here are some of the characters that you see in issues one: Red Sonja, Vampirella, Jana, Jenny Bell, and Female Kato. These are the ones that have a main part of the story so far, there are other characters shown briefly that I am sure will be introduced as the mini-series progresses. The heroines are living in their time line until suddenly a courier appears giving the heroines each a sword and asking them if they accept their gift. Each of them accept the sword but when they accept the weapon strange things happens to each warrior. Some are placed in a different time and others have part of their reality taken somewhere else. This leaves each woman that accepted the weapon confused as to what is going on. Meanwhile an evil Prince has taken notice of these warriors and he decided to create his own team of women villains to take out the heroes.
The first issue of Swords of Sorrow nothing really significant happens in the issue. Simone is setting up the story for the readers and introduces you to a whole cast of characters that will be in place for the story. While she introduces each character and displays what each character is doing in her time.
Where the issues falls flat is in the main story. There is no explanation as to why these heroines were chosen, and what they are fighting for. So far the story feels very choppy. As for the art, it wasn’t bad. I found the art to be clean and consistent through each of the panels and the colors were a bit muddy but not too muddy that it deterred from reading the comic.
Overall, Swords of Sorrow is off to a really slow start. While it’s cool to see all these heroines together in one book the book suffers from lack of organization in my opinion. While it shows you the players involved in the story nothing was said as to what is the reason they are being given these gifts and for what purpose. They just got these weapons and poof something wild happened to each one of them. Hopefully issue two helps to put things together because issue one just didn’t deliver.
Score: 2/5
Swords of Sorrow #1 Writer: Gail Simone Artist: Sergio Dávila Colorist: Jorge Sutil Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment Price: $3.99 Release Date: 6/5/15 Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital