Bento Review: Code Red: Age Of Darkness

When I saw that Comic Bento’s next box would be themed “Red and Blue,” and noted the date, I was a wee bit concerned that the box would have some patriotic or political comics in there.  As it stands, nope, nothing like that at all.  Half the boxes feature “red” characters, and the other half go with “blue,” often in the title.

First up is something from Zenescope called Code Red:  Age of Darkness.

So, this book apparently is part of a series of some sort called Grimm Fairy Tales in which characters based on old stories, mostly fairy tales, live in the modern world and protect the rest of us from supernatural threats as part of the Realm Knights for HiboCorp, your standard secret government agency.  “Code Red” is Britney Waters, a former licensed therapist who got bitten by a werewolf and now fights supernatural evil with all manner of swords, guns, and the occasional wolfing out.

Yes, she’s supposed to be Little Red Riding Hood.

Besides wearing an incredibly impractical uniform, Britney seems like a fairly run-of-the-mill protagonist.  She battles an army of orcs and a werepanther to keep ahold of something called the Cyclops’ Eye, a large red gem with mystical properties.  She’s clearly meant to be eye-candy at the least, especially since her first appearance in the book shows her in the shower while striking various impractical poses along the way.  Pat Shand’s script doesn’t ever hit me as anything worth writing home about.  The artwork is OK but never great or overly memorable.  The only guest appearance by another character from this line, Robyn Hood, suggests it would be nearly impossible to tell her and Britney apart if they weren’t in color with Britney’s red versus Robyn’s green outfit.

The book is ultimately harmless.  Some more knowledge of the setting or characters would have helped in places, but there wasn’t anything special enough here to make me curious enough to find out.  Six and a half wolf attacks out of ten.

NEXT BOOK:  Theoretically, I will eventually get an Aspen comic from Comic Bento that I find better than “meh”.  Will the next one be it?  Be back soon for Fathom: Blue, though I somewhat doubt this will be the one I end up liking.