Witchblade comic review
I started reading Witchblade years ago when I was in college, and from
my first reading I thought the first arc with Ken Irons was promising
for future arcs. The stuff afterward with Gavin Taylor and the demonic
invasion was bizarre. The invasion has some great horror vibes and
imagery, but Gavin as the side villain is so forgettable I couldn’t
remember his name despite reading his arc three times. Anytime I tried
to remember his name, I’d mix him up with Gabriel Bowman, a side
character from the Witchblade TNT show!
To the arc’s
credit, it isn’t as much of a fever dream as I thought from my first
reading. Upon rereading it, everything flows together pretty well,
though it starts to drag on if you read it all in one sitting. It
doesn’t help you can tell when the creative team changed because there
are things in this arc that get brought up and never receive payoff.
Gavin
has a hideous monster face he’s constantly hiding and will go to
murderous lengths to keep it secret. Where did this come from? Never
explained!
Sara’s temp partner Eric has a replica of the Witchblade!
Where did he get this? What happens to it after Jake blows his brains
out? We never see it again and none of this is ever acknowledged
afterward. It’s not even like there’s a retcon that this fake Witchblade
was Excalibur. It, Eric, and the fact that Jake killed a fellow officer
are never brought up again.
Aside from those weird bits, I
generally liked this arc a lot better than before, mainly because now I
can understand it. Plus seeing more of Ian was always nice.
I already talked about the Endgame crossover in my Top Cow Lara blog,
and my thoughts are pretty much the same. It’s got some decent art
barring a few ridiculous designs for the side characters and Lara, Lara
is characterized a bit weird, and the finale is weird. But unlike Tomb
Raider, the aftermath shown in Witchblade has a tonal clash that’s kind
of hilarious:
And the rest of the issue basically amounts to nothing. Sure, the Hyper Sapiens show up, but who cares about them? They completely vanish after this issue, and they don’t show up or get acknowledged in anything after this, not even a flashback.
Skipping
ahead a bit, but the issue where she fought a cannibal cult was
awesome. It had some surprisingly brutal finishing moves, and the ending
where the Witchblade willingly retracted to let Sara beat the shit out
of the cult leader was cool.
The rest of the arc with Sara and
Ian made for a fun read, and I liked how it capped off Ken and Joe’s
relationship. Seeing Sara finally let Ian have it and claim Excalibur
after tackling him through two buildings was awesome.
As the
final arc before the Ron Marz run, Lachryma was weird. I can’t think of
much else to say besides the villain was kind of bland, and I didn’t
expect Lara Croft to still be involved in Top Cow so close to the start
of Marz’s run. There’s only one issue between them keeping them from
being back to back.
I loved the Ron Marz run, but to be honest, I feel like it gets a bit overhyped.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great, it’s got some beautiful art (especially
when Stjepan Seijic gets involved). I love how he handled Sara’s
relationship with Patrick, fleshed out her and the world, and the way he
shook up her status quo… but I’ve seen people say you should skip the
first 79 issues and go straight to Marz, and I don’t agree in the
slightest.
Sure, there are some parts of the comic before Marz
that meander and don’t go anywhere (especially when Gavin Taylor’s the
main villain), but there’s a lot to like about the early issues. If you
skip to Marz, you’ll miss out on seeing Sara’s first meetings with Ken
Irons (whose son is the main villain of one of Marz’s arcs) or her
romantic tension with and character development of Ian Nottingham (the
former comes back when he returns in Marz’s run, but not the latter.
Marz’s Ian might as well be a different character).
Of the
various plot points and characters Marz introduced, I’d say my favorite
was Patrick Gleason. While I was initially more a fan of Jake McCarthy
as Sara’s partner, over time Patrick started to grow on me. Out of
Sara’s partners (romantically or in the police), he probably had the
most believable relationship with her, and their chemistry was the best
compared to Jake or Ian.
With issue 100, I thought it was cool seeing Jake come back, but the way he got killed off kinda bummed me out… at least until the next page where Sara started kissing Gleason in front of his corpse. Then it went from being kind of sad to hilariously tone deaf and unhinged.
“War
of the Witchblades” was awesome. I grew up on the 90s Spider-Man
cartoon and Spider-Man 3, so I love seeing stories where the main
character gets corrupted and slowly turns evil. Sara’s
transformation into the Dark Witchblade was cool, especially with it
juxtaposed with Dani becoming more benevolent and helpful from the Light
Witchblade. Dani becoming the new Angelus and purging Sara of her
darkness was a great way to end their conflict. My only complaints are
that Tau’ma’s appearance and attempts to manipulate Sara are so obvious
that she comes off as an idiot for falling for it, even with the knowledge she’s being corrupted and influenced by the
Witchblade. And while I
like Sara having the Dark Witchblade, its existence is spontaneous with no buildup to it. It’s not
even like there are subtle clues to her changes beforehand. After a few issues of functioning normally
with no indication anything’s wrong, Sara just flips a switch and starts covering up murders, acts like a bitch, and becomes obsessed with getting the
Witchblade back.
“Almost Human” was amazing, partially because
someone finally remembered this is supposed to be in the same universe
as Cyberforce and connected Sara to it. The fight scenes had some great
showings of Sara’s creativity, especially with the brutal ways she took
out Artemis, Ares, and Hera; and her armor looked badass!
Tiamat
was a great arc to end Marz’s run on. Sara and Dani working together to
kill some monsters was simple, but fun, and the aftermath where Sara was
forced to retire from the NYPD was honestly kind of sad to see. Though I
do find it weird that despite this being her final moments with the
police, she never interacts with Joe Siry in the issue. In fact, outside
of 144’s flashback issue, Joe was completely ignored.
The
Artifacts series had a really strong start, and I was hooked all the way
through the original story and when the universe was reset. But it
really petered out near the end. They abandoned the overarching story to
focus on the winners for their writing contests. Don’t get me wrong,
they were good stories (Eugene Ward’s “A Man Amongst Gods” was my
favorite), but they really didn’t need to use up 5 issues of their
ongoing series for it. The last 3 issues were filler, though at least 38
and 40 had actual flashbacks to the past. Jackie admits that everything
from 39 was just a “bullshit fairy tale” and issue 40 wasn’t even a
proper finale. It was decent and gave me reminders of Tales of the Witchblade,
but it bums me out we went from a story-driven plot, end that story on a
cliffhanger that isn’t even properly resolved, then switch over to an
anthology.
Sara moving to Chicago was a surprise, but I got into
it pretty quick. Tim Seeley’s writing was great, especially with how he
reached into the Witchblade’s early titles by incorporating Medieval
Witchblade into it, and the battle between the Flesh and Brunhildas had a
lot of cool moments, like Sara transforming a motorcycle.
The
arc with Alisa was weird. It starts off good and gets going with her
cult framing Sara as a terrorist… but the pacing goes off the rails.
Right after the bombshell where Alisa convinces everyone Sara’s a
terrorist and gets close to the senator, there was this sense of dread
and foreboding because Alisa was going to kill Senator Castor any second
now. Then it’s interrupted with the cases involving TRACT and Rook’s
gang, switches to Progeny and the fallout from that, then next issue
Sara’s back to Chicago and now the Alisa story continues. I got
back into the story as it went on, especially when Katarina returned,
but the arc’s final issue got a bit confusing near the end.
I get
that the Cataract was corrupting Chicago and the dialogue in the issues
says it fed on Sara and the Witchblade, but there are speech bubbles in
several pages implying it had possessed Sara. I was also wondering if
my trade missed a page with how it suddenly cuts from Katarina being
corrupted to her and the Witchblade talking in her subconscious.
I
was completely caught off guard when Ron Marz came back in issue 170.
I’ve only heard people praise his run, though I’d never heard anyone
talk about this part. The new artstyle, sudden shift back to New York,
and time skip to Sara being a sheriff were all major whiplash compared
to what I’d just read before, and I didn’t even notice she was missing
the Witchblade until I reread the issue.
This callback to issue 113’s “your hand on my ass” exchange made me chuckle.
I wasn’t expecting her to rip his hand off, though. Nor was I expecting her to actually get rid of the Witchblade and get shot by it.
Unfortunately, 171’s recap page decided to completely spoil Jackie and the Darkness’ deaths long before they happened, which was a massive bummer. I thought Sara holding his decapitated head was supposed to be a dream since it comes between her seeing another dude’s severed head and her waking up screaming, but no, apparently Sara had one flashback and the comic took us over to another.
I liked that Jenny became the Angelus. Having read The Darkness beforehand, I was curious how Jenny would take Jackie’s death and what would happen now that she was suffering full-on dementia. Turning her into the Angelus made sense with that in mind and reminded me a lot of The Darkness 2. The difference is that this story actually got resolved.
The problem is when we get to the issues that actually show how Jackie died, they’re extremely underwhelming. The two-parter with his death is awkwardly shoved in and interrupts the beginning of a different story arc, being entirely unconnected to the plot with Mayor Maguire. Not to mention how weird it is to resolve this plot thread when we’re already past the fallout from his death.
To its credit, at least issue 180 had some great buildup with its horror tone. The scenes with dementia-riddled Jenny, Hope attempting to resurrect Charlotte, and Hope freaking out at Sara set the tone really well.
Sadly, issue 181 squanders it with a lackluster, anticlimactic battle between Sara and Jackie that barely gets started before Aram shows up out of nowhere, pulls some plot convenient Ancient One murdering sword out of his ass, and Jackie doesn’t even get the chance to fight back before Sara kills him!
Really? That’s how you end the rivalry between these two? You don’t involve any of the 10 other Artifact bearers that could’ve helped against Jackie or have a drawn-out fight that pushes these two to their brink? You don’t even have him use his Darklings? Just “Sara stabs Jackie with some tendrils, he tosses her into some shit I can’t make out because of the art, and a dude Sara’s barely met gives her a Deus ex Machina to end the fight in two hits.”
This isn’t just pitiful as a final confrontation. It doesn’t even have the decency to give us any character moments between them! Their dialogue can be summed up as:
Jackie: “You can’t kill me, Sara. We’re part of the Balance, so we’re equal.”
Sara: “You changed the Balance. Die.”
Jackie: “This is my world, so I decide what balance is. Why do you keep interfering?”
Sara: “This isn’t about us.”
[Sara cuts his stomach tendrils]
Jackie (who previously survived things like ripping his chest open, getting set on fire, and blown in half by a suicide bomb): “Ugh! What the hell was that? I’ve never felt pain like this!”
[Dies]
It would’ve been better if the storyline was cut altogether. We already knew from a flashback that Sara decapitated Jackie, so there’s no mystery to how he died. And if anything, this story just leads to more questions. After Sara leaves the Estacado house, it’s implied Aram and Hope are working together, which is a bit odd. Hope wants revenge on Sara for killing Jackie. Okay, makes sense. But she was watching their fight long enough to know that Aram gave Sara the means to kill Jackie. And despite Aram saying he has magic that will kill Sara, we never see either of them again and this plot is never resolved.
To make things more baffling, after this two issue arc, it’s back to the previous story like nothing happened! “Darkness Falls” isn’t even acknowledged in a recap page!
As the final arc, “Power Broker” is a decent story and leagues better than what came before it. The villain Amaryllis wasn’t anything special, but I liked how their fight ended with Sara using one of her magic-devouring weapons against her. I also thought it was kind of funny that this was the incident that convinced Sara to resign as sheriff and move back to New York. Not being shot by a Witchblade wielding psychopath or having to fight the Angelus after getting stabbed through the stomach. She has a building explode on top of her and that’s her breaking point.
In a weird way, the last issue works as both an ending and an introduction to Witchblade and Sara, especially since there aren't any spoilers. The return of Sara meeting the Witchblade’s other hosts was nice, and I loved seeing her and Patrick get back together while parting with the Witchblade. It made for a great parallel.
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