Blade #1 // Review
It’s night. There’s a light haze about the evening. A tiny coaster of a sports car glides to a stop in front of a few people. The driver’s side door scissors up and out walks a guy dressed almost entirely in black. He’s wearing sunglasses. At night. He’s got a couple of swords because he’s there on business. He’s opening a whole new series with Blade #1. Writer Bryan Hill begins a new chapter in the life of the vampire hunter with the impeccable art team of Elena Casagrande and colorist Jordie Bellaire. The series hits the ground running with some enjoyable action that slides into a few dramatic moments.
Honestly, it’s a very classy entrance for a slaying. Blade tells the vampires’ intended victim to hide. He asks the vampires a question. They could just head off and look for another victim. (Like he’s REALLY going to abandon an expensive sports car to chase them into an alley.) There is at least one vamp punk who feels lucky. Things continue predictably. There’s a beheading and a few other slices. The intended victim is surprised that they’re actually running away. They have a tendency to do that in the presence of a slayer, though. The intended victim asks Blade who he is. That’s kind of a long story…
Hill has the honor of re-introducing the hero in a whole new series. The entrance is iconic. It’s an easy, balanced opening that establishes itself with an action scene and then moves into a well-crafted dialogue. Hill comes really close to completely colliding into a million different cliches in a graceless fashion. He manages to find a way to make even the most tired action horror cliche feel stylish enough that it doesn’t matter that it’s hit page and screen a million times before.
The art team is a good portion of the reason why Hill’s script works. It’s difficult to stalk into the night with a team of artists and carve out a compelling horror action series, but if you’re going to do it well, you’re going to want a pair like Casagrande and Bellaire working with you. Casagrande’s cool, clean lines and sharp use of perspective perfectly nail the action with more than enough space to allow Bellaire to do her thing with the colors. There’s a beautiful radiance about Bellaire’s work that feels more or less perfectly at home in the night Blade stalks.
It’s a promising opening to a new series. Rarely is a single issue this balanced between creative personnel. Everyone working on the project seems to have an equal impact on the story. Hill is delivering a script that really is a blueprint for action for someone with a very precise idea of how to deliver it to the page in a way that allows for the colorist to come in and bring it all to life. If every issue is going to be like this, the current incarnation of Blade should be a fun one.
