Comic Review: Amber Blake #1

Amber Blake #1

IDW Publishing

Writer: Jade Lagardère

Artist: Butch Guice

IDW’s new series, Amber Blake, is about the titular character showing herself a prodigy and drawing the attention of a big international school called Cleverland. There, Amber discovers the cruelty of the man who recruited her after being abused by him and witnessing two of his murders. On the run, Amber is then rescued by another organization, Argon, which acts, as the character herself puts it, as a “humanitarian MI6”. Argon recruits prodigies such as Amber in order to help make the world a better place. Although that plot transpires with amazing ideas and possible developments, it is sad to see how poorly it was delivered on its first issue.

This chapter covers the whole basic plot (described above) in one swing giving the read a weird and rushed pace. We get three-time skips in the first three pages of the comic! These present us with the first years of Amber after she was abandoned at the orphanage by her mother. Sure, we get a good idea of what happened in her life until she got to Cleverland, but if it only took a single page per skip, how actually necessary was those years to the comic’s plot? The rest of the book is dedicated to Amber figuring out just how criminal her recruiter, Mr. Kavotz, really is and having to run away from it all when confronted by him. This is the best segment in the book, yet, it’s still rushed with random information just dropping on the reader’s lap. The rest of the chapter covers how Amber was rescued and recruited by Argon also with terrible pace, this time accompanied by an unclear action scene, an awkward transition between each scene and a confusing hacking scene.

The artwork for the book is not bad. The backgrounds are composed beautifully, enriched with many tiny details which could take hours to absorb. Each of those is also wonderfully colored by Guice, providing the ideal lighting to reflect the tone of Amber’s situation in each scene. However, I believe that’s about it for Guice’s art. His facial expressions, despite very realistic, remind this reviewer too much of Greg Land’s work, who’s known for tracing poses and faces from famous actors’ mugshots, lacking in style and personality. Other than that, Guice still fails to provide involving action scenes. What happens in each panel is clear, but there are no movement lines or transition in between engagements whatsoever. We get the start and the finish, that’s it.

The plot for this series intrigued me, it really did. I adore Nikita and whatever comes in that style, which was pretty much what this title promised. I was excited to read the first chapter and to write a review about it. Unfortunately, it was a huge disappointment in both writing and artwork.