If you have never heard of Sojourn, it was one of several comics that takes place in the Cross-Gen universe. Cross-Gen was a comic book company that unfortunately went bankrupt, resulting in the complete cancellation of some of its series, many of them before their completion.
Sojourn is one of them. In fact, Cross-Gen never published the fifth trade paperback edition. Fortunately, Checker Book Publishing managed to get Volume 5, The Sorcerer’s Tale out there.
Sojourn is a sword-and-sorcery tale that has been described as “Tolkienesque”. I would have to say that I agree to that up to a certain point. Sojourn does take place in a gigantic fantasy world full of dragons and trolls and all the fantastical riffraff. There is also a quest, but there is no ring involved. Instead, the main characters must find five pieces of an arrow that once slew a wicked warlord.
Unlike The Lord of The Rings, which focused on male characters, Sojourn makes many of its crucial characters female. The main character, Arwyn, whose name sounds like the Elf Arwen in Tolkien’s classic, is an archer whose husband and child were killed by warlord Mordath. She seeks to reunite the Five Fragments of this ancient arrow in order to have her revenge.
Another principal female character is Cassidy, a thief who helps out Arwyn on her quest. The main male character, Gareth, another thief, is the weak link of the group. You might say that this comic book empowers women, but they still look hot and always show at least a little cleavage. One of the covers depicts them in tiger-striped bikinis, but this attire never occurs in the story.
I would have to admit that there is an epic quality to Sojourn, but I found the characters use very modern-day colloquialisms such as “Oh, you got to be kidding me” and “this is not good”. I suppose this was an attempt at adding humor to an otherwise very serious revenge story, and it doesn’t work in this case.
That is too bad, because what makes Arwyn such an interesting character is that she is in mourning for her husband and lost child. She clearly has revenge and widow issues, and she is dealing with them in a realistic way. At least as real as the world of Sojourn will allow.
Fortunately, if you haven’t read Volumes 1-4 of Sojourn, you can easily get caught up. The story begins when Arwyn escapes from a Troll Army led by Bohr. Arwyn manages to escape, and tries to get a ship to her next destination. Unfortunately, the ship is destroyed by a big monster, and the main characters end up on an island with zombies. Then they end up on and island populated by dragons.
Yeah, adventure is not in short supply in this graphic novel adventure. I will also say that the artwork is pretty good, except for the last issue. In short, Sojourn works, and it is too bad that readers will never know how the interesting story ends.
