Nailing one out of the two things I’ve been essentially complaining about is not a bad thing. Yes, they’ve finally done it! They’ve gotten a good writer that actually writes a competent story! His name is Troy Wall. Can you tell I’m excited?? I don’t care so much that the story was on a cliché topic, mainly vampires versus werewolves, the fact that the story made sense, moved coherently, and left me with very little annoying questions tells me we have a winner.
The story starts off with a Lycan problem at the Brimstone Society. This sets the stage as to why Rayne would finally be commissioned to take on an assassination mission. I’m so happy to know why that I really don’t care that it feels like I’m reading something from “Underworld”. While the film “Underworld” may have generated a lot of influence in the generation of this concept in the comic with the Vampires vs. Lycans including a tight leather clad female assassin, I still found this exciting to read. You move with Rayne through her trials as she fights hordes of werewolves. I think this issue most resembled the way the video game is set up. You get the mission, you know why you’re going through it and you fight hordes of enemies on the way, ending in a big boss battle! It’s a lot of gruesome bloody fun. At the end of the issue there is a very good twist, albeit a tad predictable, but solid. Rayne finally fights someone worth her time. The secluded vampires in “Seeds of Sin” just seemed beneath her and her abilities. Not so in “Lycan Rex”. Now she’s taking something on that’s more her caliber. The one problem with these one shot issues is that the stories are too short. Wall could have easily fleshed this out to a three issue mini series if he was commissioned to do so, and at this point I wish he had! With Bloodrayne’s penchant for changing writers and artists every issue I’m worried about the next issue in my list to read. I truly hope it measures up because it feels like they finally got on solid footing with this issue. This is how a Bloodrayne comic should be written!
Now, I know I said they got one out of two, right. They commissioned artist Mark Robinson to do the illustrations. Robinson is a fairly competent artist, but unfortunately Bloodrayne set the bar a little too high when they got Molenaar to do the art for the first issue. Kody can’t compete against him and neither can Robinson. Unless they can get someone to compete or amazingly exceed Molenaar I’m afraid my expectations are going to be locked on that level for a while. Frankly I preferred Kody’s art in “Seeds of Sin” over the art in “Lycan Rex.” Robinson has a slightly cartoonier slant to his illustrations to me. This might work with other comics, but it doesn’t work as well with Bloodrayne because her allure is in the realistic details. Kody was a bit of a bridge between the two. One good factor is that based on past performance the next issue will have a different artist.
In standard comic book fashion this issue comes with myriad variant covers. I think variant by Greg Horn (Cover B) is the strongest because it exudes the most feeling out of Rayne. Personally I think the variant covers are getting a little crazy at this point. There are six different covers for this issue. I don’t mind variants, but seriously maybe two or three comic covers per issue… at least that’s a bit more manageable for the collector. Even three is a stretch in my opinion.
Overall this is what I would expect from a Bloodrayne story. This is definitely worth reading if you want stronger feel behind the writing. Even though the art isn’t as strong as the other issues it still gets the job done well enough. It’s well drawn and colored overall, I just didn’t personally find the art nearly as appealing. The changing artists and writers every issue has its ups and downs at this point. We could wind up with a great artist, but a poor writer. Or we could end up with both things that are bad. At this point I’m holding out hope. Maybe they’ll finally figure out a strong way to develop the adventures and stick with this kind of a method for a little while, or maybe bring us into something with more depth. Either would be fine.
Overall Rating: 4.1/5