Broken Frontier

A story shrouded in conspiracy and danger marks Twin Blades as one of Alias Enterprises' strongest titles yet.

This issue starts off with Bera, one of the legendary Twin Blades, having sacrificed her safety and perhaps her life, to be taken captive by an enemy warlord named Braxon. She has let herself be taken in the hope of learning more about, or securing the awesome, alien weapon being wielded by her father’s enemy.

Meanwhile, her twin Bren is leading the effort to free her – she need not have bothered. It seems that the captive has become the captor, and in the process, Bera has learned the truth of the utlanning weapons. While the Twin Blades secure one of the weapons, Braxon is preparing to launch his attack. A vicious attack it is, and one that Thorfin can not hope to repel.

Moving back to the twins, we get to see more of their complicated relationship and that, even though they are twins, Bera and Bren could not be more different. Bera is the fun-loving easy going one, and Bren is more serious and down to earth. This could be construed to be cliché, but it works in defining these central characters and it is characterization that flows through their words and deeds. These scenes leave no doubt that some of the tension and story twists coming up will be driven by the different world views of each girl. Bera’s easy-going attitude leads to a spark of romance and the setting for a cliffhanger ending laced with foul betrayal.

Adrian Todd has woven the perfect amount of revelation into a story that is still shrouded in conspiracy and danger. There is a great tension in this issue as the two tribes move closer to conflict, and it is a sense of inevitability that weighs heavily on Thorfin.

As a reader you can’t help but feel great sympathy for Thorfin, he is a great leader and one who appears ready to do everything to save his people. Yet, there is nothing he truly can do against Braxon and his alien weapon. This makes for riveting reading as Thorfin goes through the motions on the way to seemingly imminent defeat.

In creating the arrogant Braxon, his self-assuredness fueled by his control of the awesome alien weapons, Todd has given us a character highly reminiscent of the real world where tyrants remain convinced of their invulnerability, leading to significant suffering for the people they command.

Odagawa’s pencils are even more assured this issue. There is a truly amazing fluidity to his action shots, and in scenes packed with endless soldiers or grand landscapes, his pencil produces awesome and lush detail, giving this world a strong almost tangible presence. The technological design of the utlanning weapon contrasts so harshly with the medieval world, and its power, which is displayed for the first time, reinforces how alien the weapon really is.

There is a new colorist on board this issue, Fransisco Perez, and he definitely stamps his own style on Twin Blades. The shift is not distracting, although the colors don’t seem to be quite as expressive as they were in #1.

After the brilliant set up of last issue, there was always the danger that issue #2 was going to fall flat – but it didn’t. Twin Blades remains one of the strongest titles coming out from Alias Enterprises and one that I look forward to reading every month.