Broken Frontier

The Knights of Good run throughout their virtual world, acquiring experience and currency as they slay beasts. Simon, known in the digital domain as Bladezz, has his own life to deal with. Son of divorced parents by day, print model by night, can he successfully defeat the beasts in his waking world?

The Guild has been an immensely successful Web series, created by writer and actress Felicia Day. Having one miniseries by Dark Horse completed by now, they've decided to focus on and tackle characters one-by-one. For the uninitiated to The Guild, this one-shot offers little of the actual game the main characters play. The Knights of Good only get a few panels devoted to them; as the title of the one-shot would suggest, it focuses primarily on Bladezz. Simon, the gamer playing as Bladezz, has his own home life with his own challenges. Being a teenage boy, his challenges primarily deal with having his mom date a guy he really doesn't care for.

Andrew Currie's art just gets awkward when it comes to faces. It may be an attempt to make his characters look like the actual stars of the Web series (as comic book characters can be drawn without the flaws of human actors), but some faces come off as outright painful. Simon constantly looks stoned and Dena is continually uninterested. Half the time, using the actors as a base, they look like cavemen.

Most stories focused on a character either have them be heroic with faults, or be evil with moments of sympathy. Pure good and pure evil are rare: even Lex Luthor has his moments of wanting to save the world, and Superman's had his moments of selfishness. Simon is just unquestionably evil in this story, succeeding in breaking up his mom and her boyfriend. While the boyfriend's not completely faultless, their breakup leads to a teary-eyed mom reaffirming that her kids come first. This would be touching if not sad, if it weren't for Simon disregarding it only to ask for burgers for dinner. Simon is the definition of callous and cruel; he just had his mom's relationship shattered thanks to his help, and all he needs now are hamburgers. If Day and Becker desired to show how unlikable this character is, they definitely succeeded.

The Guild: Bladezz may be interesting to those that follow The Guild, expanding their world and focusing on stories that you don't get to see on the show. For those that don't follow it, the complete and utterly horrifying nature of this character may actually turn you off of the story. It's not an all-together horrible story, but its appeal is very limited.