‘Summoner’s War: Legacy’ #1 is a mobile app tie-in not worth your time

This story ain’t it.

April 28, 2021

Summoner’s War: Legacy is a bad comic book. That’s the thing.

Set aside that it’s an adaptation of a mediocre game for your cell phone. So be it – that’s not a great start, but you can make solid stories from poor source material. Summoner’s War: Legacy is a comic that just isn’t worth your time. It’s a trite plot with stock characters that basically just feels lazy.

Listen to the latest episode of our weekly comics podcast!

I mean, listen, at the absolute lowest level, at the absolute basic, the book doesn’t even know what its title is. The comic book seems unsure if the title of the property is “Summoners War” or “Summoner’s War”. I went ahead and looked up the app – it’s “Summoners War” on there, but the comic is listed as “Summoner’s War”.

That might sound like a nitpick, and maybe it is. But there’s a fundamental lack of care here that means that the book just can’t raise itself beyond the level of a shlocky, mediocre tie-in.

Summoner’s (Summoners?) War: Legacy follows a girl in the middle of nowhere, who teaches herself to become a ‘summoner,’ someone who can summon and control monsters. After her summoning goes wrong, she is recruited by an older, more talented summoner. Then there’s a months long time skip after about only ten pages. Which is a choice.

The characters run into a big war between two generic fantasy species, with generic unexplained fantasy terms, and after some bickering – and the admittedly cool presence of a cat in a robot suit – acquires a crystal doohickey and a giant monster pops out.

It’s utterly, completely, and totally uninteresting. It’s the same fantasy story that you’ve heard a thousand times, and I can name a half-dozen different fantasy stories off-hand that you should check out first. Read White Trees, or Saga, or Skullkickers, or Monstress. There isn’t a shortage of better comics.

Luca Claretti’s art is the one redeeming element. The art is cartoonish, sure, but lively. For the tone that this book is trying to tell, with this light-hearted fantastical world, it’s a really good fit. It’s a shame that this is the story that this really fun art is attached to; given a different story, and a different subject, I think that Claretti could be a great talent.

But this story just isn’t it.