Born of Blood #2: Retail Edition is a comic written by Dolan with Joe Corallo. The art for this comic was done by Carlos Becarria and Sebastian Gonzalez with art direction by Lucas Urrutia. The princess of Sparta learns another way to fight as the king starts begins to age. This issue is bloody, sexy, and has a good number of unexpected moments. Our leading lady is Giaris, the very determined princess who was thrown in the fire and has come out much stronger. A couple of the side characters are Cleomenes the king and Aurelia, his advisor. The plot is a mix of combat, seduction training, politics, and more violence. Certain parts play out like a training montage but it does slow down and put reasonable amounts of focus on the important parts. The action is what you’d expect a story focusing on Spartans to be with lots of blood, gruesome deaths, and way too many stab wounds. You remember how the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones had a bunch of sex scenes? Like every third scene? Well this comic will remind you of that. This story is very tense almost the whole way through and only eases up a couple times. The dialogue is easily understandable and only a couple of pages are word-heavy. To sum it up, this is a very entertaining comic that has good drama, violence, and pushes this story forward to an unknown place.

            This is a very detailed style with a look that seems influenced by Ancient Greek art. This comic’s main colors are gold and red with the occasional white and blue. This story really only takes place in two areas: the battlefield or the bedroom. But both these(and all) locations are drawn well and tend to persist from panel-to-panel. The characters here are very expressive hanks to their very detailed faces we can easily tell which emotion is on display. Some of the older people we see just seem wiser based on appearance alone. The equipment here is swords, spears, and knives. The action is very bloody and scenes play out smoothly. We are reaching Mortal Kombat levels of blood here. The men are shirtless at almost all times but the women are almost always clothed. There are a bunch of sex scenes but outside of those moments the women here aren’t sexualized.

            Astute observers might have noticed that this review has been copy-pasted from the Kickstarter Edition of this comic. That is because I was not able to discern any difference between the two issues that would warrant a brand new review.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like lady-led combat-heavy stories about Spartans and dealing with palace intrigue this is for you.

“What would this comic’s film rating be?”

R. Bloody violence and sex.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“Ah the arrogance of youth…how precious.”

 

Physical Link: https://mercpublishing.com/products/copy-of-born-of-blood-2-cover-e-shikarii-1-100-foil?_pos=3&_sid=89c30103e&_ss=r

Digital Link: https://mercpublishing.com/products/born-of-blood-2-pdf-download?_pos=2&_sid=89c30103e&_ss=r

Unboxing Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09BtikvJjwY

***IN-DEPTH COMIC STATS BELOW***

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 21

Violent Pages: 7, for 33% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 7, for 33% of the comic

 

**The levels below aren’t necessarily maintained throughout the whole comic, but they were definitely reached**

 

Violence Level – 3

“Wasn’t no tussling at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta hit somebody.”

“I’m getting charged with how many counts of assault?”

“This was a tournament arc.”

“All my life I had to fight.”

 

Gore Level – 4

“The only thing leaking out your face is tears.”

“Looks like somebody spilled some ketchup.”

“Might need to soak that up with a bath towel.”

“That isn’t supposed to be outside the body.”

“This is a slaughterhouse.”

 

Death Level – 4

“And everybody lived happily ever after.”

“We might have gone to a couple funerals.”

“It just LOOKS like a serial killer was here.”

“Yeah this was a tragedy.”

“Think Gettysburg.”

 

Porn Level – 5

“Everybody kept their clothes on.”

“I guess it was too hot for a bra.”

“Sometimes you got to let everything air out.”

“This is like late night Cinemax in the early 2000’s.”

“Oh. This is porn.”