First Born

First Born #1-3

by Ron Marz, Stjepan Šejić

The Top Cow Universe is forever altered with the birth of Sara Pezzini's mysterious child and the cold war between the forces of Light led by The Angelus and Dark led by Jackie Estacado erupt in a epic battle with Pezzini and new Witchblade bearer Dani Baptiste caught in the middle.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics

160 pages, Paperback

First published April 8, 2008

About the author

Marz is well known for his work on Silver Surfer and Green Lantern, as well as the Marvel vs DC crossover and Batman/Aliens. He also worked on the CrossGen Comics series Scion, Mystic, Sojourn, and The Path. At Dark Horse Comics he created Samurai: Heaven and Earth and various Star Wars comics. He has also done work for Devil’s Due Publishing’s Aftermath line, namely Blade of Kumori. In 1995, he had a brief run on XO-Manowar, for Valiant Comics.

Marz’s more recent works includes a number of Top Cow books including Witchblade and a Cyberforce relaunch. For DC Comics, he has written Ion, a 12 part comic book miniseries that followed the Kyle Rayner character after the One Year Later event, and Tales of the Sinistro Corps Presents: Parallax and Tales of the Sinestro Corps Presents: Ion, two one-shot tie-ins to the Green Lantern crossover, The Sinestro Corps War.

His current creator owned projects include “Dragon Prince” (Top Cow) and “Samurai : Heaven and Earth” (Dark Horse).

Photo by Luigi Novi.

Reviews

[Bryan Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Plot Summary: The infinite war between the primal forces: The Darkness and its polar opposite The Angelus have reached a new pinnacle as an unprecedented event has occurred. The host of the darkness Jackie Estacado and Sara Pezzini the bearer of the Witch Blade (the force of balance in the struggle between the primal forces) have become expecting parents, a position previously understood to be impossible by hosts of the forces. Needless to say, the child could be the key to tipping the scales of a conflict as old as the world itself, and nobody is sitting idly by and waiting to see what will happen.

Main Characters: Jackie Estacado, Sara Pezzini, Danielle Baptiste, and the Angelus.

Secondary Characters: Patience the Magdalena

Key Issues: A balance of power is not something that should be disturbed lightly for the outcome usually cannot be predicted.

[Izlinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this while sitting in the local Barnes & Noble here in Reno. I had no idea what it was about, until I sat down in the chair to read it. I just thought the cover was interesting. I don't read Witchblade, but I did see the movie based on it long long years ago. This jumped quite to the future for me, but the introduction was nicely done, catching me up on the important characters and plot lines.

The art was alright. A bit of the skimpy-fantasy type of art (reminded me of Luis Royo, actually) but the attention to detail was pretty amazing. The story line, too, wasn't horribly done. It rotated issues of different perspectives so that was a rather neat technique. Overall a fine read.