What I Bought 2/3/06

I know what you're saying. "But Calvin, you already did this on Wednesday. Ah, but these comics hadn't reached the store by then, and now they have, ha ha!"

Finally, after long months of waiting I got the two Bloodrayne one-shots I was waiting for.

I'll pause while most of you leave.

Ok, here we go. I'm probably grading on a curve, to a certain extent, given that we're talking about comics based on a video game character (say, who remembers the Super Mario Bros. comics?). Let's roll.

Bloodrayne: Skies Afire - This one lead to an interesting conversation with Ken. He said, "Did you really want to spend $13.00 on this book?" I kind of got the feeling he didn't think I realized that because it's a limited 2nd printing it would be extra expensive. But I told him that yes, I knew, and I was cool with that. But it lead me to thinking this: When you look at what a comic book really is, in terms of being paper with pictures and words, that tell a story, is any comic really worth $13.00? I say it depends on who you ask. To me, if I want the book, hell yes, it's worth that much. I spent $60.00 on a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #300 (which was really dumb since I could have got it for like $20 less if I'd shopped around a little). To other people, probably not. I suppose if you consider the cultural impact of something like Action Comics #1, what it did propelling superhero comics, which lead to who knows how much economic impact from TV, movies, merchandising, not to mention the sheer amount of time some of us devote to them, then it'd be yes. Anyway. . .

So, the Brimstone Society present Rayne with a mission: Board a German zepplin and terminate a vampire they're transporting to the United States (this is set in 1937). Thus, Rayne boards the flight, and meets a kindly elderly couple and their nephew. So there's some nice character moments, as Rayne spends time with this friendly trio, while trying to conceal that she's a half-vampire, which can be tricky in the daytime. However, the vampire she's here to kill - who also happens to share a father with her - is aware of her presence, and sends one of his soldiers after her. From there, we get plenty of fighting and decapitations as Rayne tries to deal with being ambushed in her suite and destroying her target, while injured and in a zepplin, which had problems with, you know, exploding. That leads to what you might consider an amusing little reveal at the end of the story. At least, I was amused, you might not be.

Steven O'Connell and Jeffrey Stevenson give us a nice story, with some moments that highlight how isolated Rayne feels, what with her father having slaughtered her human family when she was young, all in an attempt to force her to join up with him. You get to see how quickly she takes to this couple that treat her very well, as she's probably lacked for affection for awhile. Still, O'Connell and Stevenson leave plenty of time for Romano Molenaar to draw scenes of great violence, which is of course, a major part of the character. Not that he doesn't do well in the quieter moments, although when drawing someone from a distance, they get a bit lopsided, and he seemed to have some trouble with Rayne's nose, but maybe that's just my opinion.

All in all, bright, vibrant, fun, fast paced, a 4 out of 5.

Bloodrayne: Dark Soul - Fortunately this only cost $4.00 dollars, or I would have questioned if it was worth it. The problem with doing a bunch of one-shots is, that other than the character, the stories have no connection to each other. Each one is basically it's own plot, so it's kind of hard to follow. This time around, Rayne's in a cemetery fighting large horned things (minotaurs?), while she's really looking for a serpent. Some person named Tiger Wraith shows up, Rayne attacks her, then Rayne gets swallowed by the serpent, which is quite large. Wraith damages the serpent, but Rayne's different when she hacks her way out. She's talking about having been imprisoned during "Mage wars" which sounds ancient, but I'm pretty sure Rayne was born in the early 1900s, so I'm guessing this is a suggestion of underhandedness by Brimstone. Then some people who I remember from the game Bloodrayne 2, who I guess I'm going to kill, if I get that far, whatever, they've shown up again. Then more hacking, more slashing.

I felt that the pacing was off, or that they tried to do too much (or maybe I'm too used to Bendis' pace to handle self-contained one issue stories). It feels like between her original mission, this Tiger Wraith showing up, "DarkRayne", and the return of Emphemera, it seemed like too much was going on. They needed to pick one or two and go with them, like maybe just the serpent and DarkRayne, or Tiger Wraith and Emphemera. Doing too much means very little got accomplished. I'm not as pleased with Rob Delatorre's art as I was with Molenaar's. It was alright, but didn't feel like he drew good fight scenes. Maybe it was that they were fighting such large creatures, but there wasn't really of sense of how they were doing the damage they did. Ultimately, it feels like the next one-shot will illuminate what exactly is going on, but it may not. And then I may never know what's going on. I suppose that's the risk of reading comics like this. Still, it was moderately enjoyable, so 2.5 out of 5.