The evil sorcerer Mordath has risen from the grave and once again stands on the brink of conquering the mystical Five Lands… Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of Sojourn #1 awaits!

SOJOURN #1

Writer: Ron Marz
Penciler: Greg Land
Inker: Drew Geraci
Colorist: Caesar Rodriguez
Letterer: Dave Lanphear/Troy Peteri
Publisher: CrossGen Comics
Cover Price: $2.95
Current Near-Mint Pricing:

Previously in Sojourn: Darkness spread across the Five Land as the dread warlord Mordath placed all of Quin under his heel. But a warrior called Ayden gathered an army that finally turned back Mordath’s army of trolls. Ayden himself slew Morath, piercing him with an arrow. Offered sovereignty over the Five Lands, Ayden instead declined and broke the fatal arrow into five fragments, scattering them throughout the Five Lands, promising to return should the pieces ever be reunited.

That was three hundred years ago. Now, Mordath is on the rampage once again, and one of his troll soldiers is seconds from butchering a young girl when a sudden attack stops the creature cold. The girl looks up to see who has saved her.
Arwyn quickly helps the girl find her father, but the city is still being overrun by trolls, and the man warns her that leaving would have been smarter.
It’s at this point that I feel we need to discuss the elephant in the room: The art of Greg Land. The matter of photo reference can be a sore spot for some readers and Land has openly admitted that he works from extensive digital reference, including adult films. That has led to some really awful reading experiences where multiple characters share the same face and the whole issue feels like clip art. The first few pages of Sojourn #1 don’t have that problem, giving us some nice panel layouts and continued storytelling (including the cobblestone streets of Gerrindor, featuring detailed architecture and texturing) and, aside from Arwyn’s nose changing shape every panel, consistency. Is it Drew Geraci’s inks that make the difference? Was the CrossGen experience a better one creatively? I have no answers, but my usual complaints about Land’s work are far less recognizable in these pages. Having reunited one family, Arwyn sets out to find and extricate her own… with less successful results.
She finds her home in flames, and while the fate of her husband and daughter isn’t explicitly shown, they’re very clearly dead. Before her grief can bring her down, the trolls who killed them also attack her! The storytelling breaks down a bit here, as I can’t quite tell how many trolls she’s fighting., but regardless, she murders them all (with a little help from Kreeg, her hound companion). When the three or six or possibly five murderers are dealt with, she screams in grief and hate, eventually making her way to a hill above the city to watch her home village burn.

That cinematic camera “zoom” is really effective stuff, and ending with that close-up makes me truly believe that she means it. As for Mordath himself, the death of Arwyn’s family is nothing more than collateral damage, as destroying Gerrindor is nothing more than a show of power to him, as the city was one of the only strongholds that he could not conquer centuries before.

It’s a big moment for him.
I can’t help but be impressed by the amount of detail in this final page, even as I see much resemblance to Marvel Comics’ Kulan Gath, a similar evil conjuror-type. Indeed, there’s a lot of that familiarity in the pages of Sojourn #1, but Marz’s story effectively zooms in to create a very personal tale in the middle of a massive battle scene, earning 4 out of 5 stars overall. It’s got a lot of Lord of the Rings, a little bit of Conan, and a LOT of “This came out in 2001,” but had I picked it up at the time, I’d have definitely been excited to pick up the next issue.

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SOJOURN #1

80%

80%

That's A Fine First Chapter

As an opening salvo, this book is great, showing us in great detail the events that would lead our protagonist on her rampage of revenge and giving us the best Land artwork I've ever encountered.

• Writing

  8
• Art

  8
• Coloring

  8
• User Ratings (0 Votes)
  0