Writer: Miguel Guerra, Suzy Dias
Penciler: Miguel Guerra
Cover Artist: Miguel Guerra
Publisher: Iberian Press
Publication Date: November 2006
Format: Trade Paperback

Samurai Elf is a graphic novel with a fairly conventional manga art style. Ardan is the last of the elves in his world. He was raised by a pair of humans in a remote forest. After a mysterious stranger comes to the house, Ardan discovers that his parents were samurai sworn to protect the planet Tyr from a strange army known as The Horde. Soon, the young elf is forced to go on a quest in the hopes of finding the answers to why The Horde is hunting him as well as attempting to stay alive. In the process, he meets a young human woman named Keegan Wulfston.

This volume is obviously the set-up and origin story for the series and the readers get a sense of the creatures that live on Tyr as well as the realization that Ardan’s story is far bigger than even Ardan realizes. While the art isn’t particularly innovative, the creative team clearly offer an interesting approach in a melding of traditional fantasy creatures like trolls with cybernetics, making it a novel approach to the idea of mechas. It’s fairly clear that Miguel Guerra and Suzy Dias are using computers to create the art, which gives it a very smooth, plastic look. The art isn’t a distraction and actually aids the battle scenes because it is so clear and well-defined. The lettering is easy to read, as well, which is unusual in many books with manga stylings. There are nice details present in the book and there aren’t any panels that don’t have backgrounds, which also adds to the story, because the reader doesn’t have to deal with pesky “floating heads.” This volume is published in black and white, which is a bit disappointing, as it seems to have been created in color, but doesn’t hurt the overall story because the printing is nice and clear.

It was a pleasant read, without being confusing or taxing, and it wasn’t, by any means, a bad comic. I am curious to find out what will happen to Ardan and I want to know why it seems like the majority of the populatino of Tyr wants to hunt him. This book really seems like a solid first effort from a creative team with a great deal of potential. The dialog wasn’t fantastic, but it wasn’t stilted, either, and it was nice to see such properly written grammatically correct English. The story flowed well and there wasn’t a sense of missing time or jumpy scene changes at all.

There are a few swear words sprinkled in the book, though they aren’t worse than a person would hear on an average night of primetime network television. There isn’t anything to suggest that this series couldn’t be read by tweens or teenagers, provided parents don’t mind the language, nor does it seem like a series that would be too juvenile for fans of quest fantasies to enjoy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say “all ages”, but it’s certainly not full of offensive material.

All in all, this book seems to be a good PG-13 action story that shows the potential, as the writers get more comfortable, to be a very good series.

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Topics: Iberian Press, Miguel Guerra, Samurai Elf, Set Apart, Suzy Dias