Four new tales as part of Paizo's groundbreaking "Worldscape" saga, drawing the greatest fantasy heroes of literature and comics into the mythos of their award-winning fantasy world and tabletop RPG!
Red Sonja must escape a dungeon with a religious icon of Issus, Goddess of Death and Life Eternal, to use as a bargaining chip in the grim political war of the Worldscape! A battle against a vicious red dragon maroons John Carter and the Martian Tars Tarkas in a dangerous jungle filled with monsters and the greatest soldiers of three worlds! Tarzan clashes head-on with the original feral heroes of mythology: the demigods Romulus and Remus! The iconic antihero and half-elf Seltyiel finds himself in the gladiatorial Worldscape, facing off against two of Earth's most sinister figures!
Written by Erik Mona (Paizo Publisher and Chief Creative Officer), James L. Sutter (Paizo Senior Editor) and more, the Worldscape saga draws the greatest fantasy heroes of literature and comics into the mythos of Paizo's award-winning fantasy world, fiction line, and tabletop RPG.
After a couple of unexplained battles where he doesn’t do nearly as well as he’d hoped—“Not gonna lie. Glad no one was around to see that”—a warrior ends up fighting in the arena against all kinds of monsters and hot babes, with his last challenge being the one and only Red Sonja. His snark of “I’m guessing they don’t call you Red because you embarrass easily” comes off just as well as you’d expect. In the meantime his friends have their own adventures in this strange universe, with all the stories eventually converging at the end, but not before other famous mythical characters show up, especially John Carter and Tarzan. As a lifelong fan, I have to say this is the worst representation I’ve ever seen of Red Sonja, both physically and character-wise. That hair. . . she looks like she went to a stylist in the Deep South. Best line: “Who names their planet after dirt?” Like this green guy, I’ve had the same thought. Second best: “I do like a girl in leather,” said by another girl. In the second issue there’s a ton of backstory that hits you like a school bus—yes, there’s a reason I use that simile—all at once. But despite all this exposition, the whole thing was simply too confusing to grasp. So many sides, too many people fluid in their loyalties. . . the only way I could eventually get through it was to stop caring. It’s fair to say this would be a lot smoother if you’re familiar with these characters, either through previous editions or the role-playing game this seems to be based on. As this was my first venture into this universe, I’m sure I failed to grasp a bunch of points throughout. Oddly enough, in the 50 or so extra pages Sonja looked a lot more like her old self. The last 20 pages are stuff like stats and stories for the role-playing game. 2.5 pushed up to 3/5
I had decided to give Volume 2 of the Worldscape series a chance, even though I was not ecstatic over the first collection. Sadly, my opinion did not change. My expectations were not met and I was disappointed. To be more accurate, there were parts I enjoyed, but overall the experience was lacking.
In this volume we have a collection of four stories. One with Tarzan, another with John Carter, a third with Red Sonja and a fourth featuring Seltyiel. The first three were very much "Blah," but the fourth with the snarky half-elf and goblins brought things back to life and was a bit of fun. Small wonder his portrait figures prominently on the back of the book. All of the stories are precursors to the adventure that took place in the first volume. However, the Tarzan/Carter/Sonja tales could easily have been told in a flashback segment of a page or two and did not necessitate the space used here. Thankfully, Dynamite included some extras including the Pathfinder scenarios, all the covers and a cool pull out poster. There is physical value for your money, but the entertainment return was small. (It was the one story and the extras that got me to three stars)
Overall, if you are a completionist, splurge for the extras. But if you are looking for a rollicking good time in the Pathfinder universe, at least for me, one story did not make up for the failures of the rest.
These are so-so tie-ins to the Pathfinder: Worldscape series. Most of them don't even star the Pathfinder characters and are instead focused on Dynamite's roster of pulp heroes like Red Sonja and John Carter, and they're all pretty short and seem to have been included as freebies in Paizo's Pathfinder comic Humble Bundles. Not essential in any way, but there is one entertaining story in here about Seltyiel the iconic magus wandering into the Worldscape with a cadre of goblins and ending up at the mercy of Vlad the Impaler and Carmilla. That one's worth the price of admission for completionists; everyone else can just read the regular Worldscape crossover and skip over this.
Bad tie-ins to a bad-crossover. Sure there's more of a narrative to these but the art is (generally) even worse and the stories don't matter because this whole world isn't worth your time. I guess it's cool to see John Carter fighting dragons? And Red Sonja shooting people in the face with guns? But none of it's all too good. The "King of the Goblins" one-shot was the best, featuring the iconic magus Seltyiel, but even then it's nothing special.
Well, this is collection of individual characters stories before Vol. 1 plot (their coming to Wordscape). The stories are far from essential, with feeble plots, not actually interesting. The first volume was quite interesting, but his one just bored me.
This volume is definitely only for the Pathfinder completist. There are fun stories here, especially the tale of a magus and goblins, but it's all backstory to the main tale that is more than covered in volume one.
Pathfinder is dusting off some public domain characters (I think, though maybe not, Red Sonja is still in publication) for some short, shoddy, unconnected stories. They are entirely forgettable. Multiple artists are involved and the quality of the art varies from average to noticeably sub-par. The dialogue is generally stiff and none of the stories are particularly good.
An inessential collection of one-shots that tie into an ultimately misguided crossover. I think the Worldscape setting has a lot of interesting potential, but it remains mostly unmined here.