Spoilers and NSFW content ahead.
It’s been one year since Princess Giaris led a victorious attack on the Argives and won over the Sparta populace as their future queen. In the time since, Giaris, her father King Cleomenes, and warrior Mor all led successful sorties against the enemies of Sparta. While Cleomenes is satisfied with his daughter’s development into a skilled warrior, he sends her off to his advisor Aurelia to continue her training – the arts of suggestion and seduction.
Aurelia puts Giaris through a regimen of bedding Spartan warriors to improve her sexual prowess and to make her able to read men’s bodies in order to seduce and then command them. She is taught other arts of intrigue, such as using different perfumes to accomplish near magical effects.
Meanwhile, Cleomenes is visited by the Klepthes who demand land as payment for the information they provided to Giaris to the whereabouts of the Argives (see issue one). Cleomenes furiously rejects their demands. That night the Klepthes kidnap Cleomenes and hold him ransom and murder Mor in the skirmish. Giaris tortures one of the surviving Klepthes to find their camp by ripping his foot off.
Giaris leads a small army of women armed with intoxicating perfumes to the Klepthes’ camp where they proceed to charm and murder its occupants. However, they are too late for Cleomenes had been impaled to a rack, tortured, and killed.
After the King is buried next to his wife during a funeral attended by Leonidas, Aurelia spits on his grave, revealing herself as the orchestrator of his demise.
While the first issue of Born of Blood was heavy on combat, issue two takes the toga and sandal approach by focusing on the political and intrigue aspects of the neo-peplum genre (with an strong emphasis on the seduction). Issue two borrows heavily from the porno-pepla of the late 70s and early 80s (Caligula, Caligula the Untold Story, and Caligula and Messalina) with wanton nudity and sexual acts. Blood is not the only bodily fluid that flows in abundance in the panels of issue two.
The artwork depicting Aurelia in a rather sinister format foreshadows her treachery at the issue’s end. It’s an obvious cliché. However, the throwback to the first issue’s encounter with the Klepthes, which only occurs in one (seemingly) throwaway panel was an unexpected element of intrigued that strongly ties both issues together.
The emotional angle of issue two is on the idiosyncratic side. Giaris mourns for the loss of her father during a rainy funeral, yet has no reaction (during or immediately afterward) when finding Mor’s body. He is only brought up offhandedly at the issue’s funeral conclusion. Giaris isn’t that cold hearted (yet?), instead it feels like a panel of acknowledgment is missing.
Issue two of Born of Blood is certainly graphic, both in its violence (ripped off limbs) and nudity, but it provides a backdrop of severity and intensity for Princess Giaris in her story to become a fierce Queen of Sparta.
The Kickstarter that funded the production of issue two concluded in June 2022 with issues shipping in the late fall. As with other MERC Publishing crowdfunding endeavors there was lots of swag, add-ons, and alternate covers which also had their own variants (foil, metal, nude/non-nude, etc.).
These included bookmarks.
And Magnets.
Stickers, poker chips, and other loot.
The Kickstarter .PDF of issue two stated that issue three would be hitting stores back in November. This didn’t quite happen as it looks like crowdfunding for issue three will begin in early 2023. The Kickstarter waiting page can be found here.
In the meantime, please check my other articles related to this write up.
- Born of Blood Issue 01
- Born of Blood – Interview with writer Dolan
- Alicia Carter and Robot Issue 01 (contains artwork by Shikarii)
Born of Blood #2 and MERC Publishing Links: