Steve Horton and Michael Dialynas’ “Amala’s Blade,†based off the concept of ninja vs. pirates sounds interesting enough, but their execution leaves much to be desired.
Amala is an assassin hired by an unknown vizier who infiltrates a boat of robots to kill the captain, Captain Cha’kooh, and its crew. That’s the entire comic in a nutshell. As an introductorily comic with a bare bones story, Horton has to pull some major literary punches in order to create some kind characterization. There’s very little of that. We learn nothing about Amala and her ghost companions except that she’s a reckless assassin and that she ran away from a life of royalty.
We learn all of this from exposition spouted from Amala’s ghost companions. This seems like Horton wanted to spend as little time on the story as possible and focus on the action. What we get is a comic that’s mediocre at best with some ninja vs. pirate action.
The action, as with the story, is also mediocre. The fights go way too fast and have no pacing. They do have some good choreography and do look nice on the page despite those two facts.
Dialynas art continues the mediocre trend. He may understand the basic concepts of what comic art looks like, but these characters and backgrounds all look like things readers have seen before. It doesn’t stand out, nor is it anything special. It’s just there to tell a comic story.
“Amala’s Blade #0†is a mediocre beginning to a series with an interesting concept. Everything from the storytelling, art and action and all unexciting and will only give off a mild interest to readers. There is room for improvement and Horton and Dialynas have a ways to go if they expect anyone to have any interest in this lackluster series.
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