Blade: Mother of Evil Review

This is Blade: Mother of Evil. It is the first volume of Bryan Hill’s run on Blade. The Prime Illustrator is Elena Casagrande. The Other Illustrator is Valentina Pinti. The Prime Inker is Elena Casagrande. The Other Inkers are Roberto Poggi and Valentina Pinti. It is Colored by Jordie Bellaire and KJ Díaz. It is Lettered by Joe Sabino and Cory Petit. The cover used above is Illustrated by Elena Casagrande and Colored by Jordie Bellaire. Trigger Warning: This book contains elements that one may find disturbing such as blood, moments of extreme violence, beheading, demonic summoning, references to torture, references to an execution, references to sexual activity, demonic possession, people being burned alive, religious imagery, references to the occult, and body horror. Readers’ discretion is advised. This book follows Blade, after he accidentally starts the end of the world. After protecting a woman being hunted by vampires, he discovers that she was Adana, the Mother of Evil. After quickly being defeated by this entity, he is discovered and punished by the group whose job it was to destroy Adana. One of the members of this group, named Rotha, breaks Blade out and teams up with him to stop Adana. Will Blade and Rotha succeed in stopping Adana, or is the end of the world going to arrive anyway? 

This book is badass. I will admit, I have not consumed a lot of media revolving around Blade, such as his comics or movie series. But, oh boy, do I wish I interacted with those things sooner, because Blade is an amazing character. Just his premise alone is absolutely fantastic. A vampire, who hunts other vampires and other supernatural creatures with a freaking katana. That sounds cool and looks even cooler. Although, for the first bit of this series, it keeps it rather conservative for monster hunting. Which makes sense, since this book is trying to build up the ultimate monster force in Adana. But the monster hunting ramps up around the halfway point in the book, where Blade breaks into a train full of nothing but vampires. But, going back to Adana for a second, she is an exciting antagonist. She has an immense amount of power and knows it. Nothing fazes her, no matter how big of a threat it could pose. Because she knows that all she has to do is blink or snap her fingers and everything just bursts into flames. She is the Mother of Evil, so it makes sense for her to act evil in everything she does. I can’t wait to see what else this series does with Adana. 

Spoiler Alert: So, a lot happens within this first volume. So, to make a long story short, Blade starts to gather up some of his allies, including an old friend named Tulip and Doctor Strange, to take over this train of vampires. This train is incredibly important because it holds Lightbringer, a mystical sword which is believed to be able to hurt Adana. Blade and his crew storm the train and get the sword. Doctor Strange then teleports the entire train to where Adana dwells and the crew is ready to fight. They never even had a chance. As an audience, we don’t even see the fight, just the aftermath of it, and it is not pretty. Adana knocks out Blade almost immediately, she puts a spell on Tulip that makes her be constantly in excruciating pain, and she steals Lightbringer. With Lightbringer, Adana starts the end of the world. I won’t go into too much detail about this apocalypse, but I will describe it in three words, monster sleeper agents. So, Blade is really mad. So mad that, with Doctor Strange’s help, he gets transported to Hell and challenges Adana to a rematch. Well, guess what, Blade gets his ass handed to him again, and Adana sets him on fire. Blade somehow survives, and in his desperation seeks help from Dracula, his sworn enemy. And that is where this volume ends. For the first half of this volume, it felt kind of slow. But those last two issues really pick up the pace and bring great stakes to the story. I also love the idea of Blade and Dracula working together. Just think of it like this, Adana is so evil that Blade believes that Dracula is the lesser threat. I cannot wait to see what this partnership holds.  

The art for this book is good, but I have some thoughts. First off, I really enjoyed the illustrations by Elena Casagrande. Her art style has a slick and cool look to it. All the different character designs all look unique and interesting, especially Adana and Blade himself. I also really love the paneling structure within this volume, just because it does actions that I haven’t really seen before. I did find Valentina Pinti’s art to be a little too cartoony for my tastes, but it is still good. But where my criticisms really come in is with the coloring. This volume has some incredibly inconsistent and sporadic coloring. In the first two issues, the coloring is done by Jordie Bellaire. I find her coloring for this book to be good, but it does leave some of the illustrations a little blurry. But then, for the rest of this volume, the coloring is done by KJ Díaz. It is a lot clearer, but I found the coloring to be really dull in a lot of the volume. I will admit, the final issue is a huge improvement, but this really confuses me about what KJ was doing for the other ones. It just really didn’t work for me. Which is shocking because I really loved his coloring for Doctor Strange issue number eight. These past couple of books have really shown me the importance of good coloring. Coloring is really the key of creating a continuous tone throughout a book. You can switch out artists, but if your colorist leaves, the tone can be completely derailed. It didn’t go that far for this volume, but it got close. So, please, Marvel, if you create a book, make sure to keep a consistent colorist.  

Overall, this book is pretty damn cool. Blade is still badass, even though he spends a great amount of this volume getting beat up. The other characters are all fun to watch, especially the main antagonist, Adana. The climax was something I didn’t see coming, with an immense amount of action, spooks, and explosions. The artwork is a little difficult to talk about. The actual illustration is quite good, but the coloring is inconsistent and dull in areas. Overall, this book does have its problems, but it is still awesome. 

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