Review: ‘Battle Chasers’ #10 – The Glorious Return!

Welcome to the table,

Your old pal Anton is so excited to put fingers to keys right now.

I love Battle Chasers. It’s a series that I have been waiting to return for over 20 years. With the last issue ending on a cliffhanger, and the only glimpse of what comes next being a few inked pages in the anthology there seemed to be no future for the story. What’s worse is that there was no way for me to find out my most burning question…

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH GARRISON’S SWORD?!?

Well, I don’t know yet. What I can tell you, though, is that unless something goes horribly sideways all I have to do is live till next month around this time and I will know… I will finally know!

For now, let’s talk about Battle Chasers #10. The best place to start is with the creative team on this phenomenally delightful book. Joe Madureira crafted the story, as Battle Chasers was his brainchild from the very beginning. Artist Ludo Lullabi brings such an amazing energy to the pages. Ludo’s style feels aligned with what Joe was doing on the first nine issues but he makes the world his own in the best possible way.

Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Tyler Smith do a wonderful job lettering up the project and there is a slew of amazing artists from the Cliffhanger days like J Scott Campbell, Humberto Ramos, and Chris Bachalo who lend their skills to variant covers alongside titanic talents like Mirka Andolfo and Skottie Young.

The story picks up right where the last issue left off in 2001, with Red Monika, a wanted fugitive and notorious sky pirate, trying to recover from her run-in with the enigmatic villain Lord August in the home of our noble and troubled swordsman, Garrison.

A band of bounty hunters operating under the name Martial Paladins are close on the heels of Red Monika and Garrison and in just a few page turns we learn that each member of this group has boss-fight-level-abilities that are each as unique and cool as I have come to expect from Joe Madureira.

It’s so good to read a comic where someone is just leaning into unique and unexplained abilities.

This guy shoots vials of blood that… explode things in a horrific way… RAD!

It’s amazing. There is a full page where a thing happens with a horse that blew me away. It’s so good. It’s so very very very good.

Then we get some foreshadowing that your old pal Anton is going to find out what Garrison’s sword actually does finally. Then the story splits to dive into what is going on with Gully, Calibretto and that goes so sideways so quickly that I think we are about to learn exactly why old Bretto’s designation is War Golems.

I’ve waited over 20 years for Battle Chasers to return and I can say with zero hesitation that it was worth the wait. The story, character development, and world-building is a masterclass in sword and sorcery elevating the genre while at the same time making it uniquely its own.

My only hope is that I don’t have to wait another lifetime for the next issue to drop and, lucky for me, I have it on good authority that issue #11 is coming July 19, 2023!

Until next time, I may have cried a little. I love this book so much you guys. I am so freaking happy right now. I have read this thing cover to cover no less than six times and have to tell you I am still not tired of it. It’s just that good. It’s that freaking good!