Cyblade: Pilot Season #1
Written by Joshua Hale Fialkov
Pencils & Inks by Rick Mays
Colors by Guru-eFX
Letters by Troy Peteri
Top Cow Productions
Cover price: $2.99; On-sale: Sept 2007

There is one beautiful, sexy woman coming after you. That might be a good thing if it wasn’t the trained killer Cyblade, one of the most popular members of Top Cow’s original flagship series Cyberforce.

Cyblade, 19-year-old Dominique Thibaut, has the power to create psychic blades and power bursts which can affect both animate and inanimate objects. She is an incredible athlete and acrobat and, boy, can she wear a g-string. However, she’s a little low on self-esteem, which is why her good friend Rashell is there to coach her along via radio on one of her first missions for Cyberdata. Cyberdata is where she thinks she has been training for six months and who sends her on a mission to retrieve their Tachyon Emolliator.

On this outing she uses her powers, skills, and looks to stun the men, and the security, while fulfilling the objective (you’ll love where she hides the emolliator). Rashell actually turns out to be a spy who is infiltrating Cyberdata and who hopes to draft Cyblade to his cause by telling her her life is a lie and that Cyberdata is manipulating her. At the end of the mission Rashell goes missing and Cyblade is charged with finding and killing him. Will Dominique remain a good soldier, or will she abandon her backer and join forces with Rashell and his underground rebels? This premise is what Top Cow hopes will hook you in to following, and voting for, the series.

Unfortunately this incarnation of Cyblade is full of comic book cliches and generic bad guys. Retrieve the “enter technological term here,” memory manipulation, brain stun implant, perfect physical abilities, cold, uncaring corporation building human weapons, you name it. Cyblade jumps and twists through a room full of laser sensors. She defeats a room full of billy-club wielding baddies without even using her powers. The baddies have the lower half of their faces covered with black masks. I don’t know if it was because they couldn’t think of a better design or if they were trying to avoid drawing a few more faces.

The art looks pretty good on the surface, but not so much the closer you look. Mays’ Cyblade is sexy, but can also look somewhat thick around the hands, arms, legs, feet, and even head. This gives her the impression of being a little midgety. My apologies to the little people. There is nothing wrong with that, but from the attire that Cyblade is not wearing and from the panties that Cyblade does not leave to the imagination, I believe they were going for a different effect.

I don’t think Mays should be inking his own pencils. His people, not the main characters, looked a little flat and some panels looked too empty. Let him spend the time tightening the pencils and including more details. He certainly has the talent. Maybe it will be more apparent in future issues. Guru-eFX does a nice job with the coloring, textures, and digital effects. They are a perfect complement to Mays’ pencil and inks.

Cyblade #1 is part of the Pilot Season event happening at Top Cow comics this Fall. They will be releasing 6 Pilot Issues for Velocity, Angelus, Ripclaw, Necromancer, Aphrodite IX , and of course, Cyblade between August and November and you will decide which two titles will get an ongoing series for 2008. Just go to Top Cow’s website and Pilot Season on MySpace to learn how to cast your vote. As of right now, Cyblade would not receive my Pilot Season vote. Ripclaw is the only other Pilot Season issue I have read, and it would receive my vote.

Cyblade is one hot chick and she is coming for you. That is good because I don’t think you should go out of your way for her.