THE KARMAN BLADE #1 REVIEW – BEAUTIFUL, BRUTAL AND WEIRD AS HELL IN ALL THE RIGHT WAYS

Man, every once in a while a comic opens and you immediately know the creative team is not interested in playing it safe. The Karman Blade #1 is one of those books. Darcy Van Poelgeest and Ian Bertram throw us into a dying world that feels ancient, diseased, spiritual and completely alien, then dare you to keep up. I dug that confidence because this thing does not waste its opening issue explaining every damn piece of mythology before allowing the story to breathe. It gives you enough to grab onto, then lets the insanity come find you.

At the center is Anatta, a young man living under circumstances that make “having a rough week” sound like a vacation. Water is scarce, power belongs to forces much bigger than him, and the mythology surrounding the Karman Blade feels less like some shiny heroic destiny and more like somebody just handed this poor bastard a supernatural problem nobody sane would volunteer for. The blade has a purpose, the world has a god problem, and Anatta is apparently getting drafted into the middle of it whether he likes it or not.

Van Poelgeest gives the story this almost biblical rhythm without turning every page into an exposition sermon. There is prophecy here, there are gods, there are voices, there is suffering, but underneath all that heavy fantasy machinery you still have a kid trying to understand what the hell is happening to him. That matters. Once fantasy loses the human underneath the mythology, I check out. This never lost me.

But fam, Ian Bertram is absolutely cooking. Some of these pages look like medieval scripture got drunk, wandered into a nightmare and somehow came back gorgeous. Bodies twist, landscapes breathe, creatures look biological and impossible at the same time, and when the story gets violent Bertram does not give you clean superhero violence. It feels wet, painful, disturbing and genuinely dangerous. Matt Hollingsworth’s colors make that work even harder, especially when the palette shifts from earthy decay into those sickly blues, pinks and supernatural reds.

I also loved how much storytelling happens through page construction. Bertram can give you dense detail and then suddenly strip the composition down to one dominant image, and that contrast makes the bigger moments hit harder. Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s lettering has to coexist with some extremely busy art, yet it stays readable and feels appropriate to the almost-scriptural tone of the book rather than sitting mechanically on top of it.

This is not a breezy fantasy comic where somebody grabs a magic sword and goes monster hunting ten pages later. There is a deliberate pace here, and readers looking for immediate answers might need to surrender to it a little. I think that is precisely why the issue works. By the time Anatta accepts what the blade is asking from him, this world has already gotten under your skin, and that final movement feels earned instead of manufactured.

The Karman Blade #1 is nasty, gorgeous and ambitious, and it looks absolutely unlike most fantasy comics sitting beside it on the rack. If Van Poelgeest and Bertram can keep the mythology emotionally grounded while expanding this world over the remaining three issues, Image may have something special here. I came out of issue one with questions, but more importantly, I actually wanted those questions answered. That, mi gente, is how you launch a fantasy book.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4.5/5

Writer: Darcy Van Poelgeest
Artist: Ian Bertram
Colors: Matt Hollingsworth
Letters: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Logo & Book Design: Ben Didier
Publisher: Image Comics

On Sale:
9/9/2026