Alas, every quest must come to an end. Even ones which had their beginning with an unfinished adventure game saga from back before the Atari bubble burst.
Swordquest #5Cover by Goni Montes
Written by Chad Bowers & Chris Sims
Illustrated by Ghostwriter X
Colored by Ghostwriter X & Ellie Wright
Lettered by Josh KrachPeter Case’s quest to steal the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery hit a few bumps along the way, like having to fight an evil wizard from another world, but he and his friends are seeing it through to the epic (as defined by the dictionary) conclusion of SwordQuest: Realworld!
“So… I’m guessing the plan didn’t pan out, huh?”
“No.”
“Damn, I really thought we’d pull this off.”
It’s when Chad Bowers and Chris Sims deftly weave together the tropes and trappings of heist fiction with intergalactic sorcery that they really cook with gas. “Swordquest” #5 leans a little too far towards the dimensional mysticism facet. As such, the closing chapter has a little less heat than the preceding ones. But in the end, Bowers and Sims deliver a fantastic finish to what’s been one of the highlights of 2017.
The mashup has drawn some clever parallels between the epic adventure-quest and a group of robbers planning that one big score. Whether it’s grand heroes or sad-sack video game enthusiasts, there’s a commonality in facing down insurmountable odds in the pursuit of the seemingly unattainable. The through lines become that much more apparent upon seeing the way Ghostwriter X draws both Konjuro’s hooded minions and the tactical assault team operating in defense of Konrad Juros. They’re both groups of faceless shells, ultimately ineffectual and defined only by their appearance and whoever has agency over them. In Bowers and Sims’ hands, the two genres act almost like the flip sides of a coin, one fantastical and the other mundane.
When this series works best it makes sure that the mundanity marches lockstep with the magical. Say, for instance, the fact that devoid of magic, the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery is still a damn sword. “Swordquest” #5, emphasizes the wizardry at the other’s expense, and perhaps justifiably so, being that this is the conclusion. Don’t get me wrong, the way Ghostwriter X depicts Konjuro plucking a strand a sunlight from the sky to wield as a weapon is rife with both wonder and tension. And the resulting sequence where he holds it at Terry’s face is a masterclass on how to ratchet that tension through panel composition. Ghostwriter X uses similarly sized frames to zoom closer and closer as Konjuro clutches Terry by the throat and waits to pounce and pierce his eyeball.
Peter makes a grand return halfway through the issue by using the sword to cut a portal from one world to another. Again, this is drawn with aplomb as Peter seems to slice through various levels of the panel itself. In its swath, the sword peels back the artwork in layers. Again, it’s thrilling to look at. But it effectively kills the last lingering shred of ambiguity of whether the world of Atara is really real.
While “Swordquest” #5 lays down its hand as having been a sorcerer’s tale all along, there’s still a thread of the real world melancholia that’s underpinned the whole series. It was a grim prognosis on his health that beset Peter and his fellowship on a course to claim a victory that was withheld from them in their youth. And now, victorious though they may be, magic swords and mystic lands or not, Peter is still dying. “The sword cannot undo what is done,” he is told by an elemental architect in Atara. “Make the most of the time you have.” For a series that’s used the specter of mortality to deal with unrealized dreams and unrequited love, it’s only fitting that the shroud remains in spite of the sorcery. It helps the series as a whole transcend being a mere genre-blending romp.
In one of the final panels, the door to Peter’s childhood room is left slightly ajar. It’s an effective visual cue. And a subtle one at that, which might be a bit more effective as an ending than the words A NEW ADVENTURE BEGINS stamped on a black panel in pixelated, red 8-bit glory. But then again, this series always trades its more mundane strokes with bombastic ones. And whether or not we ever actually see this new adventure is almost moot. The point is that Peter’s not dead yet. And he leaves the series with a sense of purpose and kinship he never saw from the rut in which we first met him.
Chad Bowers, Chris Sims, and Ghostwriter X close out their quest in fine form. Wistful nostalgia blends with self-aware irreverence. Grounded, artistic restraint gets punctuated with epic bombast. The robbers get the score. The fellowship completes the quest. The boy gets the boy, maybe. It’s about as fitting an ending as you can find.
Final Verdict: 8.5 – Look for the “Swordquest: Realworld” TPB to drop sometime early in the new year.
