Swords of Sorrow is a Marvel/DC-wannabe crossover
event from Dynamite Comics, involving some of the most recognizable and
franchisable female characters from the print’s pool. However, lacking the vast
coherent universes of both those rival labels from which to draw, and faced
with half-a-dozen characters from such irreconcilable milieus as an impossible
Mars, a lost pre-historic Jungle in an unknown island, nineteenth-century London,
or a twenty-first century alien vampire from planet Drakulon among others, you
can only try for a convoluted and contrived styoryline. This hard task is made
even more complicated if – because all your characters are female – you think
it may be a good idea to make the creative team all-female as well. One would
think it difficult to find a dozen good writers and as many good artists without
further consideration but for quality, but to narrow it down to a dozen good
female writers and artists… Well, the mind boggles. Moreover if those female
writers and artists have not as their goal to write a good story, but only to
press a certain agenda…
Obviously,
if you want politically engaged and contrived writing (although more inept than
convoluted), who you gonna call? Yes, you guessed it: Gail Simone. And you’ll
defer to her the choosing of said team of female followers – sorry, creators – in a process that strangely
mirrors the storyline-to-be. Weird, eh?
Said
story-arc began to be deployed in the one-shot Swords of Sorrow: Chaos! Prequel
(written by Mairghread Scott and illustrated by Mirka Andolfo) where we follow
a mysterious unnamed character who has “acquired
a measure of power over reality itself” (remember what I’ve said before about
contrived writing? But wait, worst has yet to come, as Gail Simone goes one
over this one in terms of plain silliness), as he picks up a team of female
fighters comprised of Purgatory (“vampire and demon alike”), Chastity (“a
monster and killer of monsters”), and Bad Kitty (“frenzy incarnate”) who, along
with Mistress Hel, are enticed, through the promise of fulfilling their most
deep desires , to protect the enigmatic man for the time needed to complete a
rite that will expand his power a thousand-fold.
In a taste
of things to come, and shortly after the mysterious character mentions that his
“nearing triumph has attracted
dissent”, we are shown a one-page glimpse of Red Sonja, Kato, Jungle Girl, and Dejah Thoris, Princess of
Mars. How these four represent dissent, or how they come together to fight the
dastardly plan of the Mysterious One is something left for the main books
themselves and the several tie-in titles (Sords of Sorrow; DejahThoris and Irene Adler,
Swords
of Sorrow: Vampirella and Jennifer Blood, Swords of Sorrow: Masquerade and
Kato and, the one that really matters to us, Swords of Sorrow: Red Sonja and
Jungle Girl).
As we here
are only concerned about Red Sonja and her role in the unfolding (should I say,
mainly uninteresting?) saga, I will only refer here to her own story-arc,
reaching out to the main storyline only when needed to clarify the events
concerning Sonja herself.
And so we
start with Swords of Sorrow #1, an insipid effort helmed by Gail Simone
with adequate art by Sergio Dávila, that not only has virtually no flame, but
goes out of her way to undo the few positive things that Mairghread Scott had
introduced in her prequel. If Scott has tried wisely to wring some mystery out
of the identity of the Big Bad Villain and the rite he proposed to perform,
Simone openly reveals his hidden motivations – as well as revealing him in such
an uninspired visual that one would believe him to be a reject from the casting
session for a comic-book adaptation of Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. If
Scott purported him to be harboring some transcendent scheme concerning the
nature of reality itself, Simone pulls him down the ladder to a mere magical Prince
seeking to satisfy a grudge against women – “against all women”. (Did I mention somewhere contrived writing? Put
simpleton writing instead.)
And, if his
four female minions (pawns?) were given by Scott some deeply personal
motivations for assisting on his mad scheme (and one over-the-topper as Mistress
Hel wants nothing more than to completely destroy Earth), here Simone wipes it
all out introducing them as if in thrall of this second-rate Harlequin villain.
“She has her seconds, her little bitch warriors. And I have my own, do I not? And you are loyal to me because you all love me?” Really? Is that all Simone can
come up with? Apparently so, as our four minions of evil sing in what I imagine
to be a single voice from off-page: “‘Til
the end of time, Prince”.
Well, we
all know who she is, but let me take a small detour here. When the Courier
finds Sonja, she is dying of thirst in the middle of the desert, after fighting
some bandits who took her sword and her waterskin, even if she slays “half of them before they have the sense to
run”. Never mind how – really, how? – could that happen: she slays half of
them and the others run, but get away with her sword and her water? Ok. That’s
Simone logic for you. But that is not my main contention (a recurring one with
me and Simone’s writing on Sonja). Sonja is dying of thirst in the desert, and
she is sprawled under the sun, singing drunkenly. One can mistake her singing
for defiance on the face of certain death. But then the Courier comes along,
gives her water and handles her the sword. And what does Sonja ask of him? “What is this gibberish you spout? And more
importantly, you haven’t got any wine, have you?” Am I the only one to find
it somewhat problematic that in Simone’s hand Sonja seems to be no more than a
drunkard? I refer you, dear reader, to “The Hanging Tree” in Red Sonja #1973 (2015), where Sonja
starts a bar brawl because she isn’t allowed to drink till she’s filled to the
brim. Here, barely dying from thirst, she asks for wine? Really? I do remember
the first story illustrated by Frank Thorne (written by Bruce Jones), “Blood of the Hunter” (1976), where Sonja
is also trekking through the desert, unarmed and running from a bounty hunter,
nearly dying of thirst. When the hunter catches up with her, dehydrated, she
gets to best him as only Sonja would be able to, but all through her
predicament, there’s only one thought in Sonja’s mind: “I’d give all this fine booty for one berry tree in full bloom.” And,
obviously, “Water… I must have some water soon..!”
It is true
that in “The Song of Red Sonja” (Conan
the Barbarian #24) it is said that she “drinks the strongest man under the table – and outswears a Zingaran!”,
but she dances happily, not drunkenly, and she drinks in celebration, not out
of habit. If Simone relies heavily, time after time, story after story, in this
simplistic character building, to tell us that Sonja’s as much of a man as the
next drunkard, and farts as loudly, her storytelling technique is little more
than amateurish, and the only way she can advance the story is through sudden personal
moments of insight – more akin to religious revelations – that tell the
characters what’s going on, in a way not seen in comics since the forties. Not to mention the infantile expedient of
having the black swords serve as universal translators. But that is the least
of Simone’s troubles and can be excused as a time-saving narrative device. When
the Courier delivers the swords to the chosen women, there are some dislocations among different comic universes:
Tars Tarkas is taken from Mars to the Hyborian Age; a T-Rex is taken from Jana’s
world to contemporary London; Kato’s car is taken to Jana’s island, etc… These
dislocations seem to have the only function of page fillers in Swords
of Sorrow #2, where they take up half of its pages. However, only
minutes after he delivers the swords, the Courier is crying to the Traveler
that “I’ve failed you, Traveler. The
women you have chosen… they will not rise to the task. All time and space is
doomed.” Vampirella is still trying to escape the T-Rex, Sonja is still grappling
with a confused Tars Tarkas, and yet… I’ve
failed you, Traveler? The women will not rise to the task? This is the
worst kind of bad writing. Try to milk tension and suspense out of lack of
events. Tell, don’t show, perhaps?
But it is
not a lonely example. Soon after reluctantly joining forces in Barsoom, Sonja
and Dejah Thoris have to fight the shard warriors sent to kill them by the evil
Prince (sorry, I couldn’t resist), and both women lead them on a merry chase to
the Dead City of the White Apes of Mars, who dutifully take care of the
pursuers. Sonja and Dejah Thoris barely have had time to catch their breath, let
alone ponder the implications of all that happened. However, in a few minutes,
Dejah is pointing her binoculars to the Martian sky and declaring: “These… doorways. Portals. They lead to
different times, worlds, even dimensions.
And worst of all… Several stars, entire constellations. They’re just…
gone.” Never mind how precipitous those conclusions are for someone who has
seen but one portal, she deduces even more. “I thought the portals were a nexus of some kind, bringing everything
together. But (…) I believe we are the nexus. Ourselves. And more like us.”
Sherlock, eat your heart out!
These
instances of action ex nihilo could
be overlooked if part of a cohesive plot of unstoppable narrative drive that
would take the reader by pure force of ideas and execution. But that is not the
case. These are join-the-dots moments that telegraph to the reader the exact
points where the author had no idea of how to go from action A to action B (or
set-piece A to set-piece B) on the list of ideas jotted down on post-its strewn
along her desk. It betrays, once more, poor writing. And that these moments are
connecting points for incoherent ideas is painfully clear. Consider that,
despite this last dazzling moment of insight on the part of Dejah Thoris (and
Sonja, for Simone, has a tendency to play a brutish second fiddle on her own
stories), she fails to recognize Sonja when she crossed to Barsoom while
fighting Tars Tarkas, despite the fact that a huge Martian boulder has been
carved by unseen forces into a giant statue of the Hyrkanian warrior. A statue
that plays no distinct function in the story, that is not explainable by the
motivation of any of the characters on either side of the lines (I may be
proven wrong on this point as we’re just halfway the book run, but I would bet
my entire Red Sonja comic book collection that I won’t be), and thus can be
read as nothing more than the writer thinking, hey, wouldn’t it be great if there were to appear in Mars a huge statue
of Red Sonja?
Well, after
they escape the shard warriors and have one more magical insight as to the
abnormal character of the events shaking the entire multiverse and other
dimensions, Sonja and Dejah Thoris enter the portal In search of the culprit,
thus closing part two of the saga. Dejah Thoris will team up with Irene Adler
in nineteenth-century London, and Sonja with Jana, the Jungle Girl in her Lost Island.
In my next post I will review Swords of Sorrow: Red Sonja and Jungle Girl
#1 (out now), as there’s no Sonja in Swords of Sorrow #3.
What there
is, however, is enough to make any normal reader throw the book at the nearer
wall, hoping it will go out the window and down an infinite cliff into a sea of
broiling flame. In a preview interview for the books, Gail Simone tried to wet
reader’s appetite by hinting that “There’s
a very, very famous character, a character of legend (you will know his name)
of massive power who is embittered about humanity, but specifically all
females. His heart was broken and he blames women. ALL women.” From what we’ve
glimpse thus far of said character – the Prince – he has no resonance with any
character fitting that description. However, in issue #3, the Traveler sends a
messenger to the Prince stating that she knows who he really is, and that she
holds in her possession the woman that caused all his hatred. The idea is so
absurd (dumb, is probably the better term)that I will refrain from repeat it
here, and, in all honesty, with any other writer I would feel sure that it was
no more than a middle-of-the-run red herring. Yet, if it realy is so…
Lady Zorro immediately understands that those are not objects, but people. Generals. And, has she easily deciphers the enigma (again, Shelock, eat your heart out), the page spread shows us Dejah Thoris, Red Sonja and Vampirella, punctuating each of Lady Zorro’s utterances: “The crown is royalty. A Queen. Perhaps a Princess [you’re sure it’s not a King, perhaps a Prince?]. The blade is a warrior, that’s plain. And the leach is a monster. Vampiro. Vampire”. And, with no need for further clues, she immediately states that “we need these women. I feel it in my heart.” A feeling that goes unchallenged by Sparrow as she, apprehending the sudden collision of realities happening around them, utters virtually the same words. Only a very bad writer would put on paper such basic trite, or someone so blind to the world that she would take ideology for reality. Or both. Enough said.
