Back for another dose of Bloodrayne and I think the title kind of gives the plot concept away. This story is naturally all about how Rayne acquired her blades. O’connel is back in this issue to handle the script and I must say he did much better this time around. The story is very coherent and flows superbly. Not only does it tell the tale of how the blades came into Rayne’s possession but it also sets the stage for her to seek out the Brimstone society.
This issue is much more of a prequel concept to the main Bloodrayne storyline because it is way before she even joins Brimstone. Bloodrayne randomly comes upon a man named Declan who runs a farm in Ireland. He’s not just your average farmer though; he used to be a Dhampire, just like Rayne. This also leads to the arc where there might be a cure for it. Apparently the folks at the Brimstone Society know all about these secrets and that’s how Rayne ends up going down that path. Of course we know the outcome, she never chooses to be cured, and instead she ends up joining Brimstone, none of that is in this issue. IT stays focused on her tale with Declan, which is what made the story good and why I liked it a lot better than “Dark Soul”. One interesting thing about these comics that I haven’t mentioned yet is they all have a “behind the scenes” section in the back rather than the normal letters from fans we see in other comics. I actually think these are really cool because it contains commentary from the writer and artist on their reasons for doing certain things. One comment Steve O’connell made was that in future issues things will all be tied together. Maybe other people have been complaining about the lack of seeming coherence in the prior issues, but he’s confident that all these apparent plot holes will be explained. Personally, I’m somewhat skeptical, but we’ll find out soon enough I’m sure.
Despite the writer being the same they did change artists on this issue to Steve Scott. He’s a pretty good artist, but I do think Delatorre was a stronger artist, though Scott’s monsters are much better looking in my opinion. So far Scott is the third best artist in the Bloodrayne issues. I find he manages to capture Bloodrayne decently overall. Speaking of the art it seems they’ve also managed to cut down on the insane amount of variant covers. They’ve cut it down to just three covers this time which I think is a very good number, hopefully they’ll stick with this and not get too carried away as places like Avatar Press seem to.
This was a much stronger issue in all and I think if they can manage to keep working towards doing this consistently there will be a lot of hope to the series. We’ll see how true O’connell’s comment is about all the mysteries being wrapped up, but for me they didn’t maintain nearly enough focus for the one shots. Someone is going to have to seriously sit down and focus on explaining all the new stuff they threw into the issues seemingly at random. I just hope I get my wish over time. Till next time.
Overall Rating: 3.8 out of 5