Customer Reviews

Poison Elves Volume 11: Dark Wars 2 - Alliances

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Reviewing the latest installment in the Poison Elves saga is a bittersweet experience. You see, series creator and underappreciated genius Drew Hayes died last year, and I'm still struggling with that. I didn't know Drew personally (though I did have the good fortune of meeting him once), but as his faithful readers know, we learned more about Drew through the opening page and letters columns of each issue of Poison Elves than we do about most people we interact with on a daily basis. In some ways, Drew was family, and now he's gone, so it's hard to look at this volume without thinking about the fact that he was literally dying while writing it.

Given the circumstances, it's not surprising that Alliances is more uneven than the preceding Poison Elves graphic novels. There's an interlude by Drew that explains how he has been ill, and expected to get the book back on schedule in the future, and he was assisted by a handful of guest artists (who were not credited by Sirius). Alliance was supposed to continue the Dark Wars storyline, but mostly serves as an interlude, with several prose pages, that helps get the major (and minor) characters on the right path towards the major conflict to come.

Honestly, this is probably the weakest of all of the Poison Elves trade paperbacks, and I hate writing that because I completely understand why it is the way it is. I'm also monumentally disturbed that there was absolutely nothing in this collection to even acknowledge Drew's passing. No dedication, no tributes from peers, not even a little introduction or postscript from Sirius to note that the guy who created, wrote, and illustrated every single issue of this series was no longer among the living. There are five more issues that need to be collected, so I'm hoping this infuriating oversight will be corrected in the final Poison Elves trade paperback. If it isn't, Sirius will never see another dollar from me.