I suppose I’ve been getting into the Bloodrayne universe as of late. I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m quite attracted to the Femme Fatal type of character, just look through my comic book collection! Anyway, I typically don’t go for the a-typical Vampire story or the gothic type of genre in general. While it’s true I like dark atmosphere, I’m not so much into the gothic influenced things, some elements are great, but not the primary focus. The most I really enjoyed so far is Vampirella, Purgatori, Lady Death and now BloodRayne. In some respects I think BloodRayne has some influence coming out of Vampirella with more of that female Vampire action star and most likely has some Blade influence as well.
Anyway “Skies Afire” is our first appearance of Rayne in comic book format! Being and avid comic book fan I was quite eager to track this down and read it when I heard about these comics. The comics go together with the video games quite well and this comic seems to deal with the assassination of more of Kagan’s family that we deal with in the first BloodRayne video game. Unfortunately this has a downside in that we’ve basically already played through this adventure if you’ve gone through the game. Luckily the comic book doesn’t suffer like the movie, since the movie made no sense in context with the BloodRayne universe; so on that level the comic is much better to me already!
While “Skies of Fire” is just a one shot it seems BloodRayne is going to become more of an ongoing series. I can sort of forgive the quick story for the expectation that they will be writing longer adventures later. This comic is almost too short to really satisfy the reader. We don’t get into her character that much and it’s probably assumed we’re already familiar with her. This is great, but since I’m physically reading something, I should be able to get into her head a little bit more. Learn what her feelings are, learn more about her motivations. This comic reads a lot more like a video game in the sense it focuses on the action a lot. They create seemingly complex bad guys in a mysterious scenario and Rayne basically dispatches them in a few panels. In time the writing might get deeper, but I understand the premise to give the fans something similar to the game at first.
Basically we’re brought to another assassination story and Brimstone has sent Rayne onto the Hindenburg to kill a vampire the Nazis are transporting. This clearly falls into the right time frame of the first video game and we’re facing more Nazis, frankly I spent so much time fighting Nazis in the first game that I wish she’d fight someone else. So the quickness of the comic isn’t that bad in retrospect, but if the ongoing series just deals with this I may end up losing interest in the writing. Now I certainly can’t talk about the incredibly sexy Rayne without commenting on the illustrations. I have to say, the art in this comic is great, stunning even. Then again I wouldn’t expect anything less from Romano Molenaar who illustrated one of my favorite characters as Purgatori. This publishing company is definitely willing to put out a high quality product for its readers and given time I will likely be made a long time fan of BloodRayne. Even if the writing doesn’t improve that much, I will definitely continue to enjoy the art if they keep it up on this level!
If you’re first experience with BloodRayne is the comic then you might get a little confused with where the story is and who she is. I definitely recommend playing the game, as the blurb in the beginning isn’t good enough to bring us up to speed for the BloodRayne universe. The story is action packed through and through, but the air of mystery they try to generate is sorely lacking, but that’s simply because this should be fleshed out to maybe a three or for issue mini-series. As the first in the series, I can see why they went with a quick story for starters. Just to give us taste and wet our palate a little. As of now I recommend this, at the very least you will be pleased with the high quality art and the action is really intense too. Definitely worth a try and I look forward to reading more in the future.
Overall Rating: 3.3/5