The Blackburne Covenant

No, it's not a Robert Ludlum adaptation. Nicieza and Raffaele's stand-alone graphic novel is essentially a fantasy story, or rather a meta-fantasy story. Protagonist Richard Kaine has written a best-selling fantasy novel, ""Wintersong,"" about a tribe of witches and how they were destroyed by ""bad guys who wanted iron to rule the world."" As it turns out, his novel wasn't really fiction, although Kaine didn't realize it. He's actually the reincarnation of its martyred heroine, Talinada Wintersong, guardian of ""The Greenway,"" and he's being tracked down by the bad guys: the Blackburne Covenant, who've hushed up their existence for centuries. Nicieza's best known for writing superhero comics like X-Men. His dialogue is blandly melodramatic, and his idea of novelistic prose, in the excerpts we see from Kaine's bestseller, is strained at best (""She felt the dichotomy, incongruous yet essential.""). The book's got a handful of visual spectacles-Manhattan's skyline covered with plants, the spectacular wooden city of the Greenway, a couple of heated fight scenes, and plenty of gratuitously semi-nude women-but it feels oddly patched together, with awkward pacing and an abrupt, inconclusive ending. Italian artist Raffaele, who usually draws horror comics, is great with the conclusion's witches and grotesque transformations, less adept with its earlier, more earthbound scenes.