The (Extra) Daily Review - Savage Tales #8

By: Various

This is the first issue of Dynamite Entertainment’s Savage Tales anthology I have read. I have been meaning to check it out for a while, but I never see it on the shelf at my usual LCS. I happened to be in another store looking for a back issue when I saw this nice Arthur Suydam cover staring up at me from the rack. I had a flick though, and decided to buy it, even though it was $4.99! I’m going to break my review up into mini reviews for the 4 different stories in here:

This the second part of a tale, but the inside cover had a small summary of the last issue, so it wasn’t hard to get into. I haven’t read a Red Sonja tale for a long time, but this seemed pretty regular fare really. There was nothing to hate, but it didn’t exactly wow me.

Again, this is a second part, so I had to do a little guess work. This one wasn’t bad. It featured an archaeologist, turned reluctant adventurer, tasked with retrieving an African villagers’ stone Idol. Soon he realizes what the Idol means to them, and that they aren’t the savages, but the greedy men who sent him here are. Not too shabby.

This one was a Red Sonja spin-off. It was a little too camp for me, and read a lot like the Hercules TV series from the 1990s.

This is the second act of the story, but the summary at the start of the book lets us know what has happened up until now, so it is pretty easy to get into. Also, the reader is drawn into the story by an, as yet unknown, narrator who tells of the downfall of Atlantis to the evil forces of Lemuria. It seems that the Lemurians have enslaved the surviving Atlanteans and made them build a bridge to a port city on the mainland. It is then revealed to us that the narrator is Cleitto, the Princess of Atlantis, and she is rousing the free Atlantean survivors to take back their city. I have to say that this story really stood out from the others in this anthology, in that the tone was much more serious, and the quality of writing was much better. The story was written by Leah Moore & John Reppion, and is quite different from anything else I have read from the couple. To be honest, I think Dynamite should expand this mini-series out into a proper 22 page series. I would definitely buy that, as I really like the concept. We often have tales of the downfall of Atlantis, but it is interesting to hear a story of what happened after the downfall.

The artwork supplied by Pablo Marcos is also good. His skeletal troops are menacing, and he gives the ruins of the once majestic city of Atlantis a really creepy feel. A good scene is the birds-eye view he draws of the bridge from Atlantis to the main land. Very Nice!

Grade: 8 out of 10

I think I’ll buy the next couple of issues, if just for the Battle of Atlantis story. It would be nice if they did jumping on issues though, like 2000 A.D. do from time to time, where all the stories start at #1. Here there is a weird mix i.e.. part 1 of 3, part 2 of 3, and part 2 of 2. It’s not a great way to get people to pick it up.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. The lettering is done by one of the best in the business: Simon Bowland. You don’t hear people mentioning letterers that much, which is a shame really, because they are an integral part of the process.