@crom_cruach: Heh, funny that you dislike the Death Pool arc so strongly because I'd probably call that my favorite. I love the character development for everyone involved, I love the art, and I love that for pretty much the first time Witchblade felt truly epic. It was a nice culmination of everything David Wohl had done for the character over the course of his two runs.
I think the pre-Marz stuff has a worse reputation than it deserves. People act like Witchblade was nothing but Sara running around in a metal bikini before Marz took over, but that's really not the case. The level of T&A in the series gets exaggerated (the signature "metal bikini" costume appears on a lot of covers, but barely ever appears within the book itself. Usually when it does appear, its because a fill-in artist is drawing what they think Sara looks like based on the covers rather than how she normally looks), and David Wohl and Paul Jenkins told some absolutely fantastic stories that would easily rank as some of the best in the series. I'm not saying every story before #80 is gold, but there's a lot of good stuff that critics and even Top Cow themselves tend to unjustly brush aside. However there was still some undeniable garbage:
For instance, during the period where David Wohl was writing less and Christina Z became the lead writer OH BOY the series took a nosedive. That period from #26-39 is without a doubt where Witchblade's bad reputation comes from. It just got more and more nonsensical, trashy, and basically unreadable. So many subplots going on at once, and none of them made sense, and none of them went anywhere. If I had to single out one story from that run as the worst, I'd have to go with the two-parter where all the subplots suddenly get dropped and Sara joins a random ninja academy and fights demons. Just pure nonsense.
Other lowlights include #66 and #67, two filler stories written by Chuck Austen and Geoff Johns, respectively. They're violent T&A fests with shallow plots that are trying really hard to be shocking. Top Cow had the idea to attract attention to the series by getting popular writers to give their take on Sara, but the problem was they clearly had never read a Witchblade story in their lives and were just writing what they assumed the series should be like. Hell, Austen did so little research that he didn't even bother to check who Sara's partner was, and just invented a random new guy. These two issues are basically the embodiment of the public perception of the series. "Sara is a 'bad gurl' cop who gets into gross/violent situations and her clothes get torn open".
The filler stuff they ran in between Wohl's last run and Marz's first issue was pretty bad too. #76-79. First was a two-parter introducing Celestine, a character who made absolutely no sense (bless Ron Marz for rescuing her and making her into a decent character a couple years later), and the next two-parter was really a Tom Judge story that had no business being published in Witchblade. And those Tony Daniel covers? Embarrassing!
And that's about it. While Marz and Seeley wrote some weak stuff too, it never got as bad as the stuff I just listed ever again. (Though the recent two-parter where Jackie died might be weak enough to deserve a spot on this list too... and again, it was written by a fill-in team)
Log in to comment