The dire situation grows more complicated as our heroine tries to find a friend among her enemies, but should you care?  Read on to find out.

The official description from Dynamite:

War with the Machine Men! While Dejah Thoris recovers from an encounter with a figure from her past, Helium’s united Red Army launches thousands of ships to stop the accursed Machine Men march against Barsoom!

There’s been some high and low moments for this franchise, thankfully this issue arrives somewhere in between.  What we have here is an intense outing where our cast comes face to face with what should be readily described as downright terrible events, and the creative team capitalizes on that fact.  As always Barsoom teeters on the brink of a grand conflict, so once more it’s up to our protagonist to do something about that.

Robert Place Napton pens the script and the author does a commendable job getting the bullet points of this greater arc slowly but surely underway.  Lost in the action however and buried under the debris of unnecessarily corny dialogue is the heart of what should be a tale full of impact.  It’s not that there isn’t any emotional resonance to be found here, but more to the point it’s predictable and stiff due to some poorly placed execution.  There are three key moments found within these pages and they all accomplish what they set out to do but none of them leave me feeling any sort of weight in their final moments.

The saving grace of this piece is the art by Debora Carita.  The illustrator handily builds the visual side of this jaunt by implementing slender lines and a delicate touch. The characters look as one might expect, as elements of exploitation of both the female and male form run rampant.  But despite that fact there’s enough beauty found in the overall design sense to forgive any moments that catered too strongly to a specific demographic.

Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris #29 is a passable extension but not much more than that.  And so it squeaks by with a recommendation.

3/5