ArwynÆs quest to bring an end to the reign of the undead tyrant Mordath brings her face to face with a creature thought to be only a myth--a fearsome and powerful dragon--but an uneasy truce with the beast leads to an all-out battle at Mordath's fortress, a battle that ends in fiery tragedy. A Graphic Novel. Original.
Marz is well known for his work on Silver Surfer and Green Lantern, as well as the Marvel vs DC crossover and Batman/Aliens. He also worked on the CrossGen Comics series Scion, Mystic, Sojourn, and The Path. At Dark Horse Comics he created Samurai: Heaven and Earth and various Star Wars comics. He has also done work for Devil’s Due Publishing’s Aftermath line, namely Blade of Kumori. In 1995, he had a brief run on XO-Manowar, for Valiant Comics.
Marz’s more recent works includes a number of Top Cow books including Witchblade and a Cyberforce relaunch. For DC Comics, he has written Ion, a 12 part comic book miniseries that followed the Kyle Rayner character after the One Year Later event, and Tales of the Sinistro Corps Presents: Parallax and Tales of the Sinestro Corps Presents: Ion, two one-shot tie-ins to the Green Lantern crossover, The Sinestro Corps War.
His current creator owned projects include “Dragon Prince” (Top Cow) and “Samurai : Heaven and Earth” (Dark Horse).
Well, Marz stopped writing the story and Land left the art duties after The Thief’s Tale. And of course, the quality kept going down. And… we’re left with an unfinished story. Disappointed.
Like the first installment, the story continues to be derivative. The dialogue in particular feels clumsy and stilted, and one of the major plot twists was broadcast very clearly, long before it was revealed. The art however, still very Boris Vallejo, is appealing in its depth, until the final chapter, wherein they change to a penciller with a significantly different style than the previous, resulting in a much more cartoony representation. Again, I wouldn't search out more of this series on purpose if I didn't have them to hand.
As with Sojourn v. 1: From the Ashes, this title has excellent art and a nice pace. Unfortunately, the paint-by-numbers fantasy plot is on full repetitive display in this volume. Here's hoping the next installment will be a little more fresh.