Whatever you want: Sword

The Sword
By: The Luna Brothers

First, let me say that the Luna Brothers are hit or miss with me. I loved Ultra, but hated the Girls. I seem to be the only person who works at the Fantasy Shop that doesn't like the Girls. That being said, I went into reading Sword with a hefty amount of skepticism. It was ill placed.

I was hooked from he first comic. The story follows Dara Brighton, a paraplegic, through her day as a college student. All is well until that night at dinner. Her whole family is gathered around the table, eating, when there is a knock at the door. A gentleman who claims to know Dara's father enters the room, calls her father Demetrios, and says he wants his sword back. When her father claims not know what the guy is talking about, another man and woman enter the room. They proceed to set the house on fire and kill everyone in the room except for Dara, who only survives because a burning beam knocks her through the floor. In the basement of the house, her hand closes around the hilt of a sword, and she uses it to pull herself up. All of a sudden, Dara can walk. She runs to the river behind her house and claims to still be a paraplegic when found by the fire department.

Dara gets abducted at her family's funeral. Along with her friend, Julie, and Justin, a student of her father's, they get away. Now, Dara is in over her head. She leaps over buildings in a single bound (kind of like superman), escapes from the FBI, and hunts down the three people who killed her family. Throughout her adventures, she is able to work out that the stories her father told to his creative writing class were really about him, Demetrios.

This book has yet to fail to deliver. I eagerly await it ever month. I even can forgive the art style, which the characters look exactly the same as Ultra and Girls. Who wouldn't like this book when there are scenes like her ripping the flesh off of her stubs to reattach her legs? You heard me, there is a scene where her legs get cut off, she grabs the sword, her thighs heal over, she rips the newly grown flesh off and reattaches her lower legs. How badass is that? You're imagining it right now, but it is a hundred times better in the comic. The first trade is out in stores now; if you love a good story, go pick it up.