X-O Manowar: Blades and Open Fields (#1)

Our first look into the issue derived from its nineties video game release!

You're looking at a comic based off of the popular, retro video game! It's a treat having read this, taking this great opportunity to talk about and review this. Granted, we saw video game play, but never played it ourselves, so we'll see how the comic variant holds.

Scene starts from Pollentia, Northern Italy in 402 A.D. Fighting off Romans are the Visigoths, led by Aric of Dacia, in Battle of Pollentia. Upon fighting them, Aric's father tries to hang on, while he finds a way to get back his wife and newborn, both who were held captive by the Romans. However, Aric and his accomplice, Gafti, seem to have boarded a ship which they thought were ran by the Romans, eavesdropping what was going on. Our duo learned of such "aliens" possessing some great weapons that would be of great use against the Romans, until they were both caught and were held in jail. Story ends when both Aric and Gafti were discussing how to go about continuing their conflict with the Romans. Furthermore, this issue closes with a sneak preview of Harbinger.

While its story was told well, it felt very cinematic. As someone who'd rather read a story, it's rare that this comic urged us to watch its movie variant (unsure if this was done, despite announcing about it back in 2016). It's only the first issue, but it brought that film-like feel to where we want, and wish, to see it all acted out. As for its video game variant, this may not have been one of the top selling games, compared to titles like Super Mario or Pokémon, but video gamers enjoyed it. If a movie is still yet to be planned, according to our research seeing that it was rumored but found no official annoucement(s), we'd like to see which studio(s) are thinking of picking this up. Nevertheless, we'll be on the lookout because the fun we got out of this comic cannot be ignored: please make that movie!

The drawings and illustrations are just what you'd expect in a comic book. It's very detailed, given there are some gruesome scenes, but they were all drawn nicely. However, seeing as we mentioned this wanting a movie adaptation of it, the drawings are good to enough to be its own animated series as well. Plenty of potential with this series; it's no wonder fans love this.

Interesting addition of a comic preview near the end, though we weren't much into it. We read this issue cover to cover, including the preview, but suffice to say, it didn't click with us. It could've easily been an ad for it, then readers, like us, can decide from there; upon reading it, the story never appealed to us. That could've been a great chance to either extend this comic's story onto the next issue or could've ended it right then and there. We understand addiing a preview in order to promote, or "hype" another series from the same company making them. Other comic fans might like it, but it's not for us.

We loved the story of this comic. We will definitely read and review the next one, hoping our local comic book store has them (book store included). Yes, we said local comic book store and not online since we want to show support for small businesses; you should do the same, purchasing without worries of possible bending and damage to your comic books. We look forward to reading more of this series...and playing the video game as we've never played it before.

Excellent work, Valiant Entertainment! Recommended very highly!

Kris Caballero

Founder of KCU Network and KCU Plus, Kris has been writing since he started blogging in late 2005. Officially back to doing computer programming, Kris enjoys reading books on Mathematics, Quantum Computing, Philosophy, plus playing old video/MS-DOS games, digital video archiving, listening to sports, public radio and classical music.

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