Blame Master Edition Volume 1

I'd never heard of Blame until a friend of mine got me the first volume for Christmas. Flipping through it, I noticed there were very few words so I decided to read through it tonight.

Blame follows Kyrii on his journey to find a human with the "Net Terminal Gene." So he goes through a decrepit but futuristic world, battling people both biological and silicon, in an attempt to track down someone with the gene.

The story is extremely sparse, both in how it is told and in the details that the reader knows. I know that the gene will allow a human to communicate with the Administration. I have no idea why Kyrii needs to find someone with this gene or what he's trying to tell the Administration. Heck I don't really know anything about Kyrii. I found I had far more questions than answers as I was reading this book, questions that were never answered.

The artwork is gorgeous (it actually reminds me a bit of Low, which I read a few graphic novels of but didn't actually write about on here), but I had a hard time following a lot of the action (also similar to Low I believe). But the world is very intriguing; I would not be opposed to learning more about Kyrii and what the heck is going on.

The Halo Graphic Novel

I wasn't sure if I was going to include graphic novels on the List. But then I decided that they are, by definition, novels. And I don't read a whole lot of them, so why not use them as a break when I need a really quick read?

I was also really happy when I picked this up in Minneapolis a month ago; I was able to pay the American price ($24 I think) rather than the Canadian price ($40).

The one thing I was rather impressed with was the art. In two of the four stories, the artwork was AMAZING! (In the other two, not so much). There was also a gallery included after the stories with pictures from many different artists, and many of those pictures were also amazing! (I also found out that this is where one of my favourite pictures comes from, which I have included here).

However, I didn't really like the stories. The first one was incredibly hard to follow. It was supposedly about one of the Elites from Halo 2, showing how he lost part of his jaw. I scanned through the pictures a couple of times and I couldn't find where he loses part of his jaw. (There was one really cool part that looked like the flood he was fighting had a chance to bite it off, but I'm really sure he didn't).

The second and fourth stories had the worst drawings. The second one wasn't bad, and it was kind of fun. The fourth story was just okay; I really wasn't impressed with it.

But the fourth story was hands down my favourite! It was the story of how Sgt. Johnson escaped the flood from Halo 1. There were no words in the entire story, yet it was amazing! The artwork (as mentioned) was phenomenal. And they didn't NEED words at all!

So, overall, I totally recommend this for any Halo fan. While the stories might not be super fantastic, it is worth getting just for the artwork.