Phenomenal! Absolutely phenomenal! I knew Bloodrayne’s stories were getting better every issue. Even I didn’t think they’d eventually get to this level. I always felt there would be something sort of average about the story lines that never really pushed them over the edge into highly graded territory. Consider me completely impressed!
I really do like this story a lot. It introduces a character living in Mexico City and he’s actually the first vampire in America, Valerio. He was turned when the conquistadors were taking over the America’s. I like this approach a lot because it shows Rayne having friends and acquaintances outside of the Brimstone society. We must remember that she wasn’t always part of that organization. I think it really adds something to her personality overall and something tells me that most people would like to get to know her better. Anyway, there’s something suspicious going on in Mexico City, young girls are disappearing and Valerio suspects it’s a resurrection of an old slave trade called the “Red Blood Run”. Basically what happened in the past was they would turn people into vampires and then use them for slaves, think of the advantages, almost impossible to injure, they’re immortal and never really get tired. At least he was partially right, the “Red Blood Run” is back in business, but has much more sinister implications now! You’ll just have to read the series to find out what’s going on and see the return of one of the characters from the video game, whom I was completely shocked to see!
Troy Wall has really outdone himself this time. Not only has he written an enthralling adventure for us to follow, but he’s included some very interesting alternative takes on the concepts of godhood. I think that cyclic nature concept where a new deity essentially comes to power every so many years is really interesting. I think the part I loved most about it was that Evil requires things to be balanced and if the deity in charge does not adhere to these rules and also create evil beings to balance the good then Evil has the power to push out the good deity or force the beings of “good” to see things anew. What does this have to do with the series? I can’t say anymore because it will give away the entire ending! However, I just wanted to show how philosophical this series can get. Kudos to Troy for making us think about things in a slightly different light! The other part of this I loved was that not everything gets concluded here. It leaves it open to follow up even more. I can’t say enough how glad I am that Troy is essentially giving the series some major direction. He’s bringing us into a huge story of cinematic proportions and a lot of this has to do with the conspiracy theories surrounding Brimstone! I can’t wait for more!!
As to be expected with a new series we have a new artist. Mario Guevera has taken up the challenge to bring Troy’s script to life for us all to see. His art is pretty good overall. He has a very sketch feel to the atmosphere of his designs. I’ve noticed this is getting a bit more popular in issues. Personally I’m usually not a huge fan of it because it looks a little choppy at times. Guevera doesn’t fall into this trapping and his images are all pretty solid. So at lest in this guise the sketch style didn’t put me off and I was relatively neutral in the overall presentation. I think he did a good job of capturing the dark atmosphere and complemented Wall’s mini-boss in this series very well. I’m not sure if they’ll ever get a permanent artist for this series and the one thing that worries me is that if they do find one they might not be up to caliber to pull it off. So far there have only been a few artists on here that are on my list of artists that capture it well enough. As of now Guevera is on it, but he’s not at the top.
Overall Rating: 4.5/5