Lords of Empyre: Swordsman - REVIEW
Lords of Empyre - Swordsman is out August 19, 2020.
By Zach Rabiroff — Dads of messiahs have never had it easy. Poor Joseph famously has a grand total of zero lines of dialogue in the New Testament, while his wife and son walk off with starring roles and Michelangelo sculptures. What kind of resentment must it breed to stand on the fringes of prophecy, watching your offspring achieve what you never could? And how much worse must it have been for Joseph if he were a career supervillain on the mend?
This is the question posed by Alex Paknadel and Thomas Nachlik in Lords of Empyre: Swordsman, a character study of the circus act-turned-criminal-turned-Avenger-turned-reincarnated-tree-person lurking about the fringes of this summer’s cosmic crossover. The issue serves a companion piece to Paknadel’s previous Celestial Messiah one-shot, which it both illuminates and cleverly complicates. In that comic, we saw the way that the Cotati formerly known as Jacques Duquesne, fueled by resentment and quiet self-loathing over his exclusion from purebread Cotati society, corrupted his son Quoi in turn with a desire for violence and revenge. Here, that picture is made more complex through a combination of road trip and criminal heist undertaken by father and son, in which Swordsman returns to the Temple of Pama where his story began, seeking to restore the purity which he imagines he lost.
That framework provides a compelling opportunity to explore an astonishingly wide array of themes along the way, from environmental justice to the infectious nature of violence. If both Swordsman and Quoi have at times veered – or seemed to veer – too far into the realm of villainy in the main Empyre series, the portrait here is of a Duquesne who strives, at least, to transcend that human pull toward revenge. In this case, it is corporate greed and the reckless environmental plundering of the Alchemax Corporation that causes him to lurch back toward his habits reckless willful killing. Still, whether those acts are justified by his Cotati heritage or merely a cancerous remnant of his human background remain a mystery, both to the reader and to the Swordsman himself: “I am a creature of warring halves,” he tells Quoi somberly, “I am nothing and no one.” Swordsman’s desire to destroy is, in large measure, a desire for self-destruction, and one which he has managed to pass on to his heir with catastrophic results.
As with its predecessor, the script manages to sneak in a whole host of nods and love letters to Marvel comics past, from Tony Stark’s playful “Winghead” as a pet term for Captain America, to the Marvel Now!-era costumes situating an Avengers flashback sequence in its proper place. But they’re all laid on with a deft enough touch to please long-time readers without distracting from the story, or alienating those who might be coming to this for the first time. Once again, it manages to serve as an example of a crossover tie-in that invites rather than excludes a first-time readership.
If Paknadel’s script manages to hit its marks throughout, Nachlik’s art is somewhat more of a mixed bag. The linework is gorgeously rendered, to be sure, but it can verge on stiffness and posed freeze-frames, especially during action sequences. More of an illustrator than a storyteller, Nachlik nevertheless manages to perform impressively during the issue’s moment of greatest emotional intensity – a gruesome, nearly silent sequence of revenge, in which Swordsman gives way at last to the broken and human side of his nature.
It’s an unsettling note on which to leave the issue, this notion of a son sworn to violence in order to save a culture a peace. But it’s one delivered thoughtfully, powerfully, and and in a more nuanced way than we might have expected from this summer crossover. Even that most ostensibly peaceful of messiahs, after, was said to remark, “I bring not peace but a sword.” No surprise, then, that in the end, this Swordsman had nothing else to give. And perhaps we, humanity, had nothing better that we deserved.
Lords of Empyre: Swordsman - REVIEW
Lords of Empyre: Swordsman
Writer: Alex Paknadel
Artist: Thomas Nachlik
Colorist: Marcio Menyz
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Publisher: Marvel Comics
THE SWORDSMAN HAS BEEN RESURRECTED! But there are more secrets than what lies beyond the grave… Join Swordsman and his son, Quoi, as they embark on a journey of discovery here on Earth – one they can’t walk back from!
Buy It Digitally: Lords of Empyre - Swordsman
Read more of Zach Rabiroff’s writing about Marvel Comics!
Zach Rabiroff is a writer and editor who has written for Open Letters Monthly, Open Letters Review, and Xavierfiles.com in addition to this column. He has read every Marvel comic ever published, and regrets the life choice only mildly.
