Swords Of Sorrow: The Complete Saga by Gail Simone

Swords Of Sorrow: The Complete Saga Reviews

• 
  Shadowdenizen

  I've been a huge fan of Gail Simone for quite a while, and (as a fan of the Pulps), while I inidividually like most of the characters...
  
  This was completely underwhelming on almost every front.
  
  
  
• 
  Chad

  Not bad for a very forced crossover. It could have used some better editing so that the tie-in series actually fit the plot of the main crossover.
  
  Received an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
• 
  Gianfranco Mancini

  My expectations about this mess of a Dynamite badass/bad-girls crossover were absolutely not much high, but the revelation of the villain was absolutely too much...
  
  
  
  
  PRINCE CHARMING??? WTF???
  
  O'good grief...
  
  Unfinished.
• 
  Quentin Wallace

  Good read featuring many, many sexy female characters with sexy art.
  
  The main story seemed "crowded", as there are really too many characters involved to follow them all. However, the one shots and other issues fleshed the story out enough that it did end up forming one cohesive story. As you'd expect from such a crossover, there's a lot of dimension hopping and time travel going on. Also, the main villain was...well, let's just say unexpected.
  
  Overall, it was a good read and if you enjoy any of the female characters featured in the story you'll probably enjoy this volume.
• 
  Kate

  *Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.*
  
  A mysterious figure called The Traveler is trying to get the worlds deadliest female heroes to join in a fight to save the world. The Traveler's nemesis, The Prince, is assembling a villainous group to take out these heroes and help him achieve world domination.
  
  It's a simple enough premise that falls apart half way through. For me there were just too many characters, some of them I was familiar with and some I wasn't but just added to the confusion. The storyline jumps around through several different time zones and worlds but this soon looses it's coherency and I found it difficult to keep up with what was supposed to be happening, it seemed as though the issues were perhaps out of order and this would certainly explain why it was confusing. It also appears as though the e-Arc is incomplete as it's only 413 pages and not 504 as printed on Ammy and GR. With that in mind the ending that I got made no sense and I have no idea how things turn out and it abruptly ended in the middle of an issue.
  
  The art was okay although at times it seemed quite crude and inconsistent. I'm a fan of Sonja and Vampirella so this was particularly disappointing. The one really positive thing about the read is that I really loved Jennifer Blood in this and I'm pretty eager to pick up her comics now.
• 
  Sanjib Dash BookishDramas

  Editing my initial review.
  A second reading has brought forth a fresh take on this book with the story cross overs in some cases forced and results in plot jumps or challenges. After having read the superior Spider-Verse in between this one seems a little less well knit and keeping pace with so many active characters is an exercise in itself.
  Still the attempt itself of pitting lots of female characters together, as a group and against each other with diverse interests and personal agendas makes this an awesome read.
  Just being able to see so many characters in one place and interacting with each other is enough to iron out the weaker aspects of this book.
  
  This is the ultimate comic book crossover event which beats Marvels Infinity War and rivals Justice League, the Nail hands down for its majorly female characters from the Dynamite multiverse.
  
  I had been hoarding this, parsing little by little.
  
  The ending for me was too sudden and short.
  
  Having read most of the stories about the individual characters during the lockdown(s), I had an in depth knowledge about the characters and their idiosyncrasies. I looked on for this crossover for the sheer number of heroines assembled for one book and wanted to see how the story manages each of them.
  The result is an epic story.
  We have some of Dynamite's celebrated bad girls on one side pitted against the even more celebrated badder girls, if there is a phrase like that, with the story being weaved by the master villain in pursuit of his "true love" and counter weaved by a mysterious lady The Traveller who brings the good ladies together for a counter thrust spanning space and time led by Red Sonja, Dejah Thoris and Vampirella. This trio wield the name sake Swords of Sorrow with everyone else sporting different varieties of blades with the artists going berserk in creating blade designs for all.
  
  The stories and the characters are backed by an all star female writer team led by Gail Simone.
  
  The pairing meetups are similar in all the stories with the sword coming along in a similar curve.
  The stories swing in places with some very tight ones like Vampi and Jennifer Blood and some very silly looking ones like Sonja and Jana. But its a long series so some hits and misses are expected especially trying to loop together so many lines of stories and characters.
  The art also oscillates between bold and daring to comical and bland.
  
  This is a book that I will recommend.
• 
  Shawna Hunter

  Oh dear, someone spilled the toy box.
  
  Ok, so this review is going to seem more negative than intended. Let me begin by saying that this was a fun read with many, many, many, far too many interesting characters. It is well worth a read but keep your expectations tempered.
  
  The main problem here is that there are way too many characters. A focused narrative centered on 4 or 5 would be fine but by the end of this story I was literally pausing to ask "who the hell is that?" Athena and a group of ninjas show up with no introduction at all and one panel even showed Thor!
  
  This is a time jumping, crossover event style story so confusion and randomness are to be expected but a lot of times this is used more as a cop-out than a narrative devise. Need an army? Hey guys, I jumped through time portals off screen! The final confrontation with the Prince lasts 1 page and has no dialogue with him. What were his motivations? Did they try to redeem him? Did any of the women even know who the hell he was?
  
  This is very much a spill over of characters that just get randomly thrown together. Some work (Red Sonja and Jana the Jungle girl are awesome) and others don't (seriously, Lady Zorrow and...uh, other spanish woman are the same damn character). It reads like a child breathlessly telling you this awesome story that they're clearly passionate about but they've lost a lot of the details in their fervor. There's a lot of good stuff here but as a narrative it really needs tightening.
• 
  CJ - It's only a Paper Moon

  I had to stop reading this about 80% in.
  
  Why?
  
  Well, I am a fan of Red Sonja, I like Vampirella, and I think the other characters are interesting. The story however (was there a story) was thin and almost non-existent.
  
  This collection was choppy, the dialogue wasn't that great and the nothing was figured out. They get swords. Yay. But why? I mean, the readers sort of understand, but the characters are clueless which leads to run around defeating T-rexes and serial killers.
  
  I thought this was going to be more cohesive and a lot more interesting. I thought I was going to see Red Sonja and Vampirella kicking some ass together.
  
  I was disappointed and I most likely will not be adding this to my collection.
  
  Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review*
• 
  Steve

  I received this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
  
  This one was simply too massive, too many similar characters. It sounded good in concept, and the artwork was pretty good, but it fell apart, simply got too big to maintain the plot.
• 
  Rachel Bridgeman

  Anything with the name Gail Simone will have me waiting with bated breath to read. As a comic writer and artist she is a game changer, a feminist, a storyteller par excellenece and having met her at a ComicCon, a downright charming lady ! But Gail Simone,Leah Moore, Nancy A Collins and more? With a huge story over arcing time and space with female kick ass heroes I had never heard of joined with literary favourite Irene Adler? Could not get my hands on this quick enough! The colours are lush, the inkwork fine, the drawings are vivid and the story as genre spanning,mythology bending and meticulously plotted as you'd like. Definitely definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of female characters writ large who are sexy and smart as hell with a story to match their considerable skills.
• 
  DeAnna Knippling

  Completely bonkers. Cheesy, t&a-packed nonsense. Laughed through it, just so goofy. The ultimate manifestation of, "...AND THEY FIGHT CRIME!!!" My only gripe was that it wore me out a couple of chapters before the end; there are a bunch of one-offs and the last few felt like interruptions. Glad I read it.
• 
  Alan

  I think the core crossover holds together pretty well, but as is the case is most of these company wide events, aka the comic book version of a summer movie blockbuster, the side issues and mini-series add very little to the story.
  
  Even though the Vampirella/Jennifer Blood story was a nice add in that it was the first comics work by Nancy A. Collins I've seen in years. It is not up to her old DC/Vertigo work, but nice to know she's still writing (as an aside I couldn't quite get into her Sonja Blue novels).
  
  Now's here my question for anyone else who has read this, and has some knowledge of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion opus.
  
  Is Simone riffing on the Eternal Chmapion here? The female generals are all presented with black blades (in the main series they are black, colorists mess it up in the side issues). The owners of these black blades are to preserve the multi-verse and come from various timelines/dimensions themselves. This read to me, and I have but a passing knowledge of the Eternal Champion mythos, as Moorcock's various quests for, and defense of Tanelorn by various champions (who also possess black blades).
  
  
• 
  Becky

  What’s neat about this crossover event is that these characters are from different worlds and realities, and the arcs often focused on two characters initially at odds who find common ground and respect for each other. I feel like I would have loved this even more, because it very much reminded me of the latest Avengers movie but for Dynamite, and of course I don't really know Dynamite's body of work (except I kind of do because apparently they write comics about Sherlock Holmes and Dracula and Tarzan).
  
  
  The collection features the issues in the order they were published, so some of the arcs are woven together in a kind of confusing non-chronological order. I'm not actually convinced the stories are meant to fit together perfectly cohesively, because sometimes the characters would part ways and then inexplicably be back in the same world in the other arc, so I tried not to get too bogged down in the details while reading.
  
  
  Overall this was a lot more fun than I expected, and I'm glad I read it. There are some solidly awesome girl power moments, despite the very male gaze-y aesthetic, and the villain is totally contemptible for his treatment of women in a way I enjoyed rooting against.
• 
  Maria Kramer

  How can such good writers make such a pointless collection of blah? Repetitive, nothing plot with too many characters to really empathize with any of them. What a waste.
• 
  Marcelo Soares

  É hora de evento, gurizada!
  Uma crise qualquer da DC?
  Uma guerra mal guardada da Marvel?
  Não. Um evento da Dynamite com todas as Bad Girls possíveis e imagináveis.
  Sério, a lista é mais ou menos a seguinte: Irene Adler, Red Sonja, Dejah Thoris, Vampirella, Lady Rawhide, Black Sparrow, Lady Zorro, Jungle Girl, Jane Porter, Masquerade, Kato, Pantha, Jennifer Blood, Miss Fury, Bad Kitty, Chastity, Purgatori e mais algumas rápidas aparições pelo meio do caminho.
  De um lado nós temos o cara do mal que contratou a Chastity, a Purgatory, a Bad Kitty e a Hell e quer unificar todo o espaço tempo para encontrar a mina que uns tocos nele centenas de anos atrás.
  Do outro lado, a Viajante chama as minas e, através do Courier, entrega umas espadas mágicas para todo mundo e elas precisam aprender a lidar umas com as outras para derrotam o malvadão na próxima guerra. E, claro, tudo gira em torno da trindade: Vampirella, Dejah Thoris e Red Sonja.
  Por que elas? Ora, são as personagens mais conhecidas da editora, afinal quem leu um gibi das Ninjettes?
  Eu nem sabia que elas existiam até a hora do almoço de hoje.
  Bom, não só a mini que conta o evento principal, há várias edições especiais e mini séries que contam os estranhos duetos formadas pela magia da Viajante: Dejah Thoris e Irena Adler pulando entre Barsoom e a Londres Vitoriana; Vampirella e Jennifer Blood enfrentando xamãs corvos e traficantes mexicanos; Red Sonja e Jungle Girl saindo no tapa com dinossauros; Jane Foster - do Tarzã - e Pantha enfrentando uma deusa crocodilo gigante numa Londres cheia de pirâmides voadoras e por aí vai.
  Eu achei bem divertido naquela vibe filme B que a Dynamite é especialista e como não é um evento que tenha grandes pretensos de reescrever a história de uma grande editora, ficou muito melhor que muita porcaria metalizada e com reis negros que saíram recentemente. Mas tem problemas, o maior problema parece ser com a edição, colocar a história principal no meio de tantas edições e com tantos personagens parece que ficou muita gente perdida, literalmente, tem personagens que aparecem em um ou dois quadros e não são exatamente apresentados, então eu não sei quem elas são. A revelação final de quem são o vilão, a mina que o dispensou e a Viajante saiu do cu alguém, porque não faz absolutamente nenhum sentido, exceto, claro, pelo fato da Dynamite ser uma pequena editora e não querer pagar direitos autorais para ninguém.
  Mas não precisava exagerar.
  Eu achei divertido, não vai mudar a história das histórias em quadrinhos porque, de vez em quando, um gibi só precisa ser um gibi.
• 
  Jim

  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.
• 
  Maik Civeira

  Se trata de un crossover masivo que reúne a una multitud de heroínas de cómic y pulp, prácticamente todos los personajes femeninos de los que la editorial Dynamite tenía la licencia para publicar. Algunas de ellas son personajes tan antiguos como la literatura decimonónica, mientras otras son estrellas nuevas del mundo del cómic. Reunidas por una misteriosa mujer conocida sólo como ‘la Viajera’, y dirigidas por la tríada de Vampirella, Sonja la Roja y Dejah Thoris, su misión es detener a un supervillano cósmico que amenaza la existencia misma del multiverso.
  
  El proyecto estuvo a cargo de Gail Simone, veterana escritora de cómics, una de las mujeres más celebradas del medio y voz feminista en el mundo de los cómics, crítica de la representación de los personajes femeninos en las viñetas y quien acuñó el concepto de “mujeres en el refrigerador”. Empezamos bien. Como la Viajera en su historia, Simone se encargó de reunir a un superequipo de escritoras de cómics, apodadas las She-vengers.
  
  Y bien, ¿de qué trata este cómic? La palabra clave es: sororidad. La hermandad entre mujeres para protegerse unas a otras usando cada cual sus fortalezas. Este concepto es reforzado por el hecho de que el villano no solamente es un hombre, sino que es el príncipe azul de los cuentos de hadas, y que ‘la Viajera’ que congrega a todas las heroínas no es otra que la bruja de los cuentos.
  
  Claro, la serie tiene sus clichés característicos de los crossovers. Pero la importancia de esta saga radica en lo extraordinario del proyecto, de su mensaje de sororidad y de la reivindicación de las mujeres, ficticias y reales, en un mundo hasta ahora dominado por los hombres. Se sienten vientos de cambio en la cultura pop, vivimos tiempos interesantes en los que veremos a cada vez más mujeres empoderadas, en las pantallas, en las viñetas y en la vida. Este cómic es parte del cambio.
• 
  Hector Ibarraran

  I have never been a big Dynamite comics reader, but I got a bunch of them from a humble bundle and I have been selecting books at random from my digital library, and this one came up, so I went into it without knowing a lot about the universe. Luckily, a lot of the characters are in the public domain, so it wasn’t super difficult to understand what was happening.
  
  Like most reviewers, I feel like this book tried to do way too much with way too many characters. Frankly, I couldn’t bring myself to care less about a few of them. The Jennifer Blood arc, for instance, was painfully bad. With that said, I really enjoyed Red Sonja’s humor, and chemistry with the other characters. Some of the interactions made me laugh out loud. I loved Lady Zorro, and the Fox (I think that’s her name), so those moments made me stick with the story. With that said, the only reason I could follow the story was because it was a simple good vs. evil one, and not very good at that. I never knew why they were fighting, but it didn’t matter that much, because everything was a good excuse to bring disparate characters from different universes together, and that was cool.
  
  I still don’t understand why so many of the characters choose to fight in bikinis, but the tendency was not as annoying as it could have been. You get the sense that these books were not written, or illustrated for the purpose of showing off said bikinis, but still. I’d like to see more practical costumes (and to their credit, some of them were).
  
  I didn’t hate this book, and had a lot of fun with some parts. I just wish the authors had focused more on less characters. With that said, I’ll definitely be picking up Gail Simione’s Red Sonja, and will look forward to reading a few more Dynamite comics (though definitely not Purgatori or Jennifer Blood).
• 
  Chris M

  Bad, even by the standards of most company crossover events. And I once again am baffled why Gail Simone is so popular when she keeps associating with junk like this.
  
  Okay first off, whoever did the sequencing for this omnibus needs to be fired. As just one of many instances of bad formatting, we get two issues of a three-issue run following some characters, then it gets interrupted by the main story sequence showing these characters further down the timeline being fine and somewhere totally different, then we get the climax of their three-issue run, which has any tension removed because WE ALREADY SAW THEY GOT AWAY AND WERE FINE.
  
  Throwing all of Dynamite's femme fatales in one series sounded like a good idea to someone, but all it does is reveal how vapid and interchangeable they all are. This isn't helped by the fact that the titular swords of sorrow allow time travel, which is a neat way to put all these people from different times and worlds together, but on the downside it reveals most have no personality whatsover.
  
  Dynamite once again reveals they have no idea how to use the characters from Chaos Comics that they bought, although this isn't as dreadful as their standalone TPB.
  
  The reveal of the villain is stupid, and belongs more in a bottom-tier Zenescope comic than in something from Dynamite.
  
  At least I got introduced to Masquerade, the only character of interest here, but unfortunately she apparently belongs to the Superpowers arc, which I have zero interest in.
  
  Better luck next time. Maybe Dynamite can focus on paying decent writers instead of having absurd amounts of variant covers.
• 
  Lina Jones

  Personally, I kind of enjoyed it more out of a sense of nostalgia for wacky crossovers, and some of the books having pretty good art. That said, the stories in this aren't all that good, and the "twist" is kind of hollow feeling. I suppose it does serve to introduce people to the current "Dynamite Universe" of pulp hero characters, as it does feature quite an array of potentially interesting characters I'd never heard of, while the main trio of the series serve as recognizable flagships.
  
  I am also amused that its got this very feminist "girl power" thing, while all the characters are these incredibly cheesecake male-gaze-oriented action girls. And there's nothing wrong with that, I just find it funny.
  
  If you want a better crossover story between some of these characters, I would say look up other crossovers not associated with this particular storyline. Vampirella/Deja Thoris is a decent read.
• 
  Shannon Appelcline

  I love a big crossover of characters who have never done so before, and even though I wasn't familiar with most of these characters, I decided to give it a try, especially given Gail Simone's core role. I think it was generally worthwhile doing so.
  
  In many ways, it feels like the classic Valiant Unity, with portals opening up passages between characters and different times and different worlds. The most charming part are the pairwise miniseries, which gave two unlike characters (such as Vampirella and Jennifer Blood or Red Sonja and Jungle Girl) the opportunity to team up. But overall, all the world/time jumping paid off well. The overall plot also had some charm to it.
  
  But, the series got too long and there were just too many characters and too many of them felt similar if you didn't know them. The usage of armies of faceless foes also never helps. But even the notable four villainous women weren't really used that well.
  
  So a fun concept, some good elements, but it got old.
• 
  J.

  Up front, there's very little chance of this crossover succeeding. However, Gail Simone has impressed me before, so I was willing to give it a try. And Simone's work is quite strong. The main book itself is quite good. The villain is an odd choice, but intriguing, and I ultimately enjoyed it.
  
  However, the backup books are almost universally poor. They are all plotted way to similarly, with plot points being repetitious by happening over and over. The dialogue is unbearable. The storylines are choppy.
  
  This book is also collected in release order, and could have used some rearranging to make sense. Unfortunately, that probably would have smashed all the good stuff together, which would also be problematic. Ultimately, I give the main story high marks for trying something unusual and pulling it off. But the rest--ugh!
• 
  Johan

  I got this via the The Boys vs The Girls Humble Bundle. It is a collection of 21 single issues: the ones included in this volume plus others. I didn't finish this series and and don't want to waste time reviewing each single issue. I am just going to write this one review.
  
  What is this even about? Someone gathers a bunch of female super villains and someone else gathers a bunch of female super heroes. They fight each other and amongst one another across different universes(?) and timelines(?). It is chaotic. I didn't know most of the heroes and villains. There are lots of swords involved. There are some scantily clad women. At one point there is also a T-Rex in case this might interest you. I have no idea what I just read.
• 
  Bob

  I very much enjoyed this crossover of mostly female kickass characters. Interesting storyline concerning the jilted spoiled Prince of All Universes who blurs all timelines in his effort to possess his heart's desire. Most all of my fav fems, good and evil, teaming up and choosing sides. Vampirella, Purgatori, Jungle Girl, Red Sonja, Chastity and Dejah Thoris, all familiar, team up with many unfamiliar to me, such as Jennifer Blood, Lady Rawhide, Masquerade and Lady Zorro. Crisp writing and amazing illustrations, including numerous splash pages made this graphic novel a pleasure to read. Highly recommended.
• 
  May

  Imagine having watched maybe the odd Marvel MCU movie or two before going in to watch Avengers Infinity Wars and only will you understand the sense of loss, bewilderment and general confusion while trying to read this dizzying graphic novel. It started off fine but like Thanos, the villain in this graphic novel is pretty sub-par. All the action is derived from the heroes interacting with the evil generals which does not explain why it only involves females. A brief explanation of motive would have been helpful but if there was one, it got buried under a mountain of action sequences that became boring pretty quickly. A shame because I like Gail Simone's work but there was simply too much going on with the loosest of connections.
• 
  Björn Bengtsson

  Disappointing.
  
  The story is basically just a backdrop for presenting a dozen female characters who all look exactly the same and have massively over sized boobs and lack any character traits. The story lacks depth, the characters are very two dimensional and for most part, the graphics is boring. The story could have been really great if it was presented differently.
  
  The only merit of this rather thick volume is Red Sonja and her friend Jungle Girl. Those two had character, and I also enjoyed the graphics style.
• 
  Winston Crutchfield

  The individual stories don’t connect well to each other or to the main story and there are many plot device shortcuts. But let’s face it, the main draw is seeing all of these characters share the page. The individual stories are better than the main book, though this “complete” edition suffers for breaking them up into publication order (which I usually prefer), a decision that contributes heavily to the disjointed feel of the story. I liked it, but would have preferred a greater focus on Red Sonja, Deja Thoris, Vampirella, and the Prince to bring out the meat of the story.
• 
  Raziel

  “A lord needs subjects, Eva. A lion needs prey.”, Lord Dracula
  
  “A crime against a man is wrong, a crime against all men is monstrous.”, Mulan Kato
  
  “Everything you all have said is true, and none of it matters.”, Dejah Thoris
  
  “You are not heroes. But you are valorous.”, The Traveller
  
  “I have a suggestion. Why don't you write a blog about it?”, Vampirella
  
  “I let old-fashioned monkey-brain terror get the better of me, and I nearley got myself killed!”, Jennifer Blood
• 
  Anne

  Kirja oli ajoittain sekava kun ajankohta ja näkökulma vaihtelivat. Lisäksi minua ärsytti hirveästi, että lähes kaikki sarjan naiset olivat taistelussakin erittäin vähäpukeisia. Toisaalta hahmot olivat mielenkiintoisia ja etenkin loppu oli hyvä, dramaattinen ja epätoivoinen kuten kunnon taistelukohtauksen kuuluukin.