Kendra #1 is a comic with story by Ben Dunn & Joseph Wolff with art by Ben Dunn and colors by Dylan Fagan and Shantona Shantuma. A skilled sellsword in need of money looks high and low for work. This is a supernatural high fantasy tale with all sorts of creatures that has comedy, violence, and mystery. The leading lady for this tale is Kendra, she is elite swordswoman with blur hair that lives an eventful life and who currently finds herself without money. She also has a sword and armor that can speak to her. There are many other notable characters that she will come across with varying degrees of familiarity. The story begins with Kendra getting into a scuffle with a shape-shifting witch named Hexa and it sounds like they’ve been through this before. Afterwards Kendra scours the town looking for way to make money which is proving to be difficult. This takes place mainly in the town of Vespa where many different creatures and different races live. The violence here can be brutal and hard-hitting but there isn’t much blood and gore is somewhat heavy. The pacing is steady for the most part with the tone of a 90’s fantasy movie with some comedy. The intensity here goes up due to violence and danger. The dialogue is conversational with lots of back-and-forths, mid-battle quips, and cheeky remarks. There are no word-heavy pages here and the comments from the sword and armor can be difficult to read. This is an exciting debut issue that does a good job of setting the scene and it gives us an outgoing and boisterous lead whose adventures we’ll want to follow.

            The art here is a drawn in a detailed, slightly cartoonish style with some well-done lighting and shading. The color palette here is pretty wide with a lot of darker tones befitting this kind of fantasy tale. For scenery this story has a thick forest with interesting trees as well as mountains with mysterious caves. There are many locations visited here from an inn, a tavern filled with hard fighters, various guilds, and of course the aforementioned forest. The backgrounds are split between showing the surroundings of the area and being a gradient color with optional special effects. The expression level is very high as Kendra sports a different look on a near panel-by-panel basis. The main emotion is anger and shock with some surprise, annoyance, and rare fear. The faces have a good amount of detail with big eyes and they can get animated which helps the expressions come across strongly and clearly. The mystical effects are bright and a bit soft which helps them stand out on the page. The violence usually involves swords and can get a bit bloody with one instance of gore. There is a good amount of physicality. The action scenes have smooth flow and feature a good amount of panels to divvy things up and prevent confusion. Kendra wears revealing armor and is subject to numerous lewd shots of her butt and chest; every woman that graces a page has large breasts.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes, if this is up your alley.

“Would I like this?”

If you like supernatural high fantasy stories starring a violent woman in the vein of Red Sonja and featuring sword-based violence, cheeky comedy, and mystery then this is for you.

“What would this comic’s film rating be?”

R. Violence, gore, lewdness.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“No worries…I won’t chop his head off!”

 

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507431118/kendra-sell-sword-no-1/description

***IN-DEPTH COMIC STATS BELOW***

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 35

Violent Pages: 11, for 31% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 2, for 6% of the comic

 

**The levels below aren’t necessarily maintained throughout the whole comic, but they were definitely reached**

 

Violence Level – 3

“Wasn’t no tussling at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta hit somebody.”

“I’m getting charged with how many counts of assault?”

“This was a tournament arc.”

“All my life I had to fight.”

 

Gore Level – 4

“The only thing leaking out your face is tears.”

“Looks like somebody spilled some ketchup.”

“Might need to soak that up with a bath towel.”

“That isn’t supposed to be outside the body.”

“This is a slaughterhouse.”

 

Death Level – 2

“And everybody lived happily ever after.”

“We might have gone to a couple funerals.”

“It just LOOKS like a serial killer was here.”

“Yeah this was a tragedy.”

“Think Gettysburg.”

 

Porn Level – 2

“Everybody kept their clothes on.”

“I guess it was too hot for a bra.”

“Sometimes you got to let everything air out.”

“This is like late night Cinemax in the early 2000’s.”

“Oh. This is porn.”