Stan Lee & Yoshiki’s Blood Red Dragon #1 from Image Comics
Where to start, where to start? Initially Blood Red Dragon looked very promising: a Stan Lee and Yoshiki of X Japan collaboration with fantastic artwork. What’s not to love about that? If I could think of any musician who would make a great comic book superhero, Yoshiki would take my vote. However, after reading Blood Red Dragon, I want my vote back.
The story is pretty awful. Seems like everything got lost in translation. The dialogue is forced, clumsy and falls flat when the characters are interacting with one another. On top of that, the story doesn’t seem to be able to convince us that Yoshiki, epic master musician, can harness the super human powers which stem directly from his unfailing love of making music. Yeeeah, … okay then!
What kills the story for me is the inner monologue that drives the story along. As opposed to it being from a reflective view of the events that have occurred, it is a personal narrative that is happening in the moment. This doesn’t work well and just creates an awkward and, at most times, unnecessary commentary that the artwork does a better job at telling.
I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it either. It is hard to get lost in the story when the story is so cheesy. An actual musician (Yoshiki) is a host to supernatural powers through the heart of his music. We can’t help but be reminded of Family Guy’s KISS Saves Santa*. Everything about it is oh, so wrong, but I can’t help but want to give it a second chance to see if it can get better.
Artwork by Carlo Soriano and Crimelab Syndicate: 4 out of 5
Story Written by Jon Goff: 2.5 out of 5
* KISS Saves Santa on YouTube http://youtu.be/oB1FxEQG57s
Review By: Luke Uphill & Oriana Koren
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