It's still a bit early in the story to tell if writer Kieron Gillen has a good grasp of the characters involved, but it's a good concept, with lots of potential for dramatic and fun stories. Read Full Review

And the visual goofiness is only further accentuated by the backup feature, which is drawn by Jamie McKelvie. McKelvie aims for a similar clean, spartan look, but his characters all appear exactly as they should. The backup feature looks very slick, and I wish the main book was more in line with it. I hate to trash Sander's work, because it works perfectly well in Beast-less scenes, but those are few and far between. Clearly, Beast would like us all to understand that it ain't easy being cheesy. Well, it ain't easy enjoying S.W.O.R.D. either, but its strengths are such that I can manage well enough for now. Read Full Review

The good news, art-wise, is that Steven Sanders's style in the main story is fairly consistent with that of Jaime McKelvie, who illustrated the backup story spotlighting Lockheed. The bad news: Sanders's work, with its many elongated faces, pales in comparison with McKelvie's. It's not that surprising, since the latter artist has collaborated with Gillen closely on Phonogram from Image Comics for the past couple of years. Still, one can also see that Sanders is trying to maintain some consistency with John Cassaday's style as well, and he captures the sterile, utilitarian nature of S.W.O.R.D.'s headquarters. Read Full Review

I was really looking forward to this, but I'm clearly not in the target audience. S.W.O.R.D. is everything I'm not looking for in a comic, while using characters and basic situations that are everything I'm looking for in a comic. I want to love it, but am instead, entirely disinterested in it. It's not bad, but it's nothing that I want to keep reading. Although I understand Marvel Boy and Beta Ray Bill will be showing up soon. That might get me to stick around for a little while at least. Read Full Review

My problems with this issue start with the first panel, with the implication of bait-and-switch tactics in the art style. The fact that three different characters, two of them representatives of two different alien races, look so similar is bothersome (though the revelation that the Beast apparently resembles the males of Brand's alien half's race kind of makes sense in and oddly Freudian sense.) The breakneck pace of the issue doesn't help with clarity, although the art does very well with spacecraft and technology and things of that nature. All in all, there's a lot of obvious influences in this book, from the 'Silence of the Lambs' riff to the teasing 'Nick & Nora' nature of Brand and Beast's relationship, to Lockheed's single-mindedness about Kitty. Indeed, the characterzation of Lockheed as an angry hardcase may be the thing that moves this book from blah to amazing, as but there's just too much introduced all at once, and a very nontraditional narrative in use, wherein the questi Read Full Review

"S.W.O.R.D." #1 is a lively opening issue, setting up a variety of conflicts in a comic book version of that Heather Locklear show about L.A.X. but in space, with super-heroes, and fondly-remembered Marvel U.K. bounty hunters. Gillen could have a lot of fun with this premise, and he seems to be setting things up well. And with less Sanders and more McKelvie, the comic just might work. Read Full Review