When I heard that Dynamite was launching the second volume of Xena: Warrior Princess, I immediately requested this book for a review. And with a creative team like Genevieve Valentine, Ariel Medel, and Nanjan Jamberi, who can blame me? I opened the pdf with haste, excited to see my girls Xena and Gabrielle back to take on the mythological ancient Rome. Unfortunately, though, as I ventured deeper into the story, my heart began to sink.
We are introduced to a couple of starving girls, who Xena and Gabrielle save from an angry mob. And the rest of the issue follows the group as they try to reunite the girls with their missing family. As whole, the story felt forced and heavily episodic. None of the scenes seemed to flow well into one another, and the dialogue, at times, felt clunky. There would be moments where Genevieve started to build up some momentum with amazing dialogue, like the flash-back of the Harpies cut to a confrontation with a Legionnaire, but then would stop dead in her tracks with out-of-pace narrative. There were great ideas here though, and Genevieve did a great job of sprinkling in the obstacles that Xena is up against this time around.
The art for this issue was good. Ariel and Nanjan worked very well together, and they put together a clean book. Every panel was clear, concise, and well-paced, it just wasn“t anything special. There were no distinguishing features that made this book stand-out, and it just blends in with the rest of the industry over the past decade.
As much as it pains me, I have to give Xena: Warrior Princess #1 2 out of 5 stars. Genevieve tried hard to refresh the reader’s memory on the new status quo of this universe, but what came out was jumbled exposition. And the art, though well done, did not break the mold enough for me to be able to suggest the purchase. Though I wouldn“t knock the book off just yet. Let“s give it a few issues and see if things improve.
[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Author Profile
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I just graduated from MSUD with my BAS in Mathematics. I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend, and our two cats. I work full time for NTIA-ITS as a Computer Scientist. All I really do is engineer mathematical models and write code all day. I took up this second job at Comic Crusaders as a way to become more involved with the comic book community. Since I was a child I have loved comics. I grew up reading Spider-Man, Shi, New Mutants, Spider Woman, and Gen13. As I got older, however, my tastes started to shift from almost exclusively Marvel to various independent labels. Now I read a huge variety of comics: Valiant, Black Mask, Aspen, Avatar, Image, Dynamite, Boom, Aftershock, etc.. If anyone wants to know, my favorite publisher, hands down, is Valiant.
I am also working on writing a few comic books myself. I have about 4 ideas in the fire, but only 1 of them is really getting anywhere; I have 6 of the 10 books finished. In addition to writing, I am also a practicing colorist. If you want to checkout any of my writing samples, or coloring samples, please check out my DeviantArt and let me know what you think.
dirtgrubdylan.deviantart.com.
Some more about me? I love black metal and video games. I usually spend most of my time hanging out with my girlfriend. We have been together for 6 years, so at this point she is basically my best friend. But when I am not with her, I get together with my friends to drink some beer and play some Magic, the Gathering. And, as pretentious as this is, I am also working on starting my own engineering firm. So that involves me reading a lot of textbooks on Mathematics and Computer Science.
So yeah, if you have made it this far thank you very much! I am crazy excited to start my career in writing. Let's see what I can do with this.
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