DreamWave are the people who brought you Transformers: Generation One.  Of course, the 1980s robot revival is not going to last forever, and so DreamWave need to take advantage of their current prominence to sell their other work.

Fate of the Blade has a giant battling robot count of zero.  In fact, it would be classed as a mature readers book by most publishers, albeit for language only.  (Oddly, the book carries no mature readers warning, although there's one in the adverts.)

It's Los Angeles, 2035, and megalomaniac movie producer Victor Richardson has bought himself a genetically engineered wife who's been mentally programmed to love him, not that she realises it.  Wrier Chris Sarracini places a lengthy scene at the beginning of the story which establishes all of this head on, rather than introducing Mya and then revealing the back story, which would probably be the normal approach these days.

I can see what he's trying to do here - get the major hump of suspension of disbelief out of the way as soon as possible.  But it also means that the book starts with a fifteen page prologue including some four pages of exposition.  It's a strong enough concept to sustain a scene of that length - and just about plausible as an extension of Phillippino brides - but it means that the lead character doesn't turn up until halfway through the book and has little opportunity to make an impression in the remaining pages.  She's carrying a whopping big sword on the cover, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the story inside, where her main contribution to the plot is to spend four pages moping at a party.

Having said that, I suspect this more is the result of writing to the trade paperback audience as opposed to outright bad pacing.  Sarracini does set up a somewhat interesting premise (though I have no clue how it's heading towards her wandering around with a sword, which makes me a little suspicious about the future direction of this series), and he establishes his villain fairly well.

Art comes from Job Yameri and Erik Sander, names which mean absolutely nothing to me.  A quick search on Google turns up nothing about Yameri at all aside from the solicitations for this issue, an item of fan art, and a posting to Chynna Clugston-Major's message board two years ago.  On that basis, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that this is a professional debut.  And a good debut it is too.  He seems to be under the influence of some of the better WildStorm artists, and he has a decent sense of body language.  He's a little too keen on establishing shots from an elevated diagonal angle (you know, where everything in the room is at right angles to one another - Liefeld draws them all the time), but it's a generally good looking book.

The promise of a sword-wielding uberbabe has me a little sceptical, but this is a pretty decent first issue.  Certainly not what I'd expect from DreamWave, and it's nice to see them showing a bit of range.

Rating: B+

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