Seven Swords #1 / $4.99 / 32 pages / Color / On Sale 6.16.2021
Writer: Evan Daugherty
Artist: Riccardo Latina
Colorist: Valentina Bianconi
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
Cover: Andy Clarke and Jose Villarrubia
Incentive Cover: JG Jones
A weary and jaded D’Artagnan is drawn into a final conflict with the wicked Cardinal Richelieu, whose ruthless quest for power has led him to the supernatural. But the Last Musketeer can’t defeat these infernal enemies alone.
To save the world, he’ll need to join forces with seven iconic swashbuckling heroes: Don Juan, Captain Blood, Cyrano de Bergerac, to name a few. SEVEN SWORDS, who must overcome their host of differences and work together if they have any hope of thwarting Richelieu’s diabolical plans.
From writer EVAN DAUGHERTY (writer of films such as Snow White and the Huntsman, Divergent and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and illustrator Riccardo Latina comes high
adventure with a cutting edge!
EVAN DAUGHERTY ON WHY THIS STORY IS IMPORTANT TO HIM:
“My greatest passion as a screenwriter is telling old stories in new ways. It’s what I tried to do with Snow White and the Huntsman: take an iconic fairy tale and find some new way into it, updating and revising it for our modern era. That was the goal with Seven Swords as well. I grew up a fan of rip-roaring swashbuckling books, films and TV series. Everything from Dumas’ The Three Musketeers to Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac to films like The Princess Bride. I desperately wanted to tell a story in this genre, and it felt like a mashup of some of the greatest swashbuckling heroes in literature would be a clever way to do it.
There’s an electric sense of fun and adventure in a lot of those old stories — something that’s often missing from stories these days. My goal was to maintain that sense of fun, while also putting a new spin on these stories, giving the series a slightly darker, more modern edge.
EVAN DAUGHERTY ON HOW HIS APPROACH TO WRITING A COMIC DIFFERS FROM WORKING ON A SCREENPLAY:
“Over the years, I’ve learned to think more visually as I write screenplays for film and television — imagining what the movie might look, sound and feel like as you’re putting words on the page. My experience with writing comics is that you have to think EVEN MORE visually about what’s on the page and you have to be far more economical with your words. I often found myself drawing little thumbnail sketches as I wrote, just to get the roughest sense of how the story might flow on the page. Of course, I kept those sketches to myself and let the amazing artists interpret the words in their own way. Invariably, their changes or adjustments were a vast improvement over what was in my head.”
EVAN DAUGHERTY ON THE INFLUENCES HE DREW UPON (PERSONAL AND/OR IN MEDIA TO SHAPE THE NARRATIVE:
“This may have been the most fun part of the process — revisiting all the essential swashbuckling “texts”. Re-reading Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and Rostand’s play, Cyrano de Bergerac. Some essential films: the 70s Musketeer series directed by Richard Lester, Errol Flynn’s 1948 interpretation of Don Juan, and a film that became a new favorite, the 1950 Cyrano De Bergerac starring Jose Ferrer.
One curveball influence: the John Wick series. I felt like these swashbuckling swords-for-hire were, in a strange way, sort of the mercenaries or hitmen of their era. In fact, as a shorthand, I often describe this series as “John Wick with swords”.
EVAN DAUGHERTY ON IF HE IS A BIG COMIC BOOK READER AND WHAT SOME OF HIS FAVORITE TITLES ARE:
“I am indeed. Some of my favorites: early pre-Unity Valiant comics, in particular Magnus Robot Fighter, Turok, Archer & Armstrong — now that I think of it, these all have a pulpy quality that must have certainly informed Seven Swords. And of course, I have to tip the hat to Alan Moore’s original mashup, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which greatly inspired this book. Moore is also responsible for what I think is one of the greatest pieces of literature, illustrated or otherwise, his run on Swamp Thing in the mid-80s.”
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