Silverblade
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Silverblade was a supernatural fantasy comic book limited series. It was published by DC Comics in 1987. The series ran for only twelve issues. The stories were written by Cary Bates with the art drawn by Gene Colan. With some of the issues, Colan's artwork was assisted by Klaus Jansen. Silverblade was published in DC Comics' deluxe format.
[edit] Plot Summary
Silverblade centers on an embittered has-been movie star named Jonathan Lord. Lord has had a terrific career performing the roles of a wide variety of swashbucklers and other fantasy roles during Hollywood's golden age, his greatest being in the film Silverblade, an Errol Flynn-type swashbuckler adventure story. Unfortunately Lord has become typecast as a swashbuckler, and has become too old to play such roles.
Lord lives alone in a posh Hollywood mansion that he had bult with his own fortune made from his films fifty years ago, with only his butler and major Domo for company. The butler is the Silverblade series' first person narrator. His name is Bobby Milestone, a former child actor who never achieved the fame that Lord did.
The butler recounts how the mansion used to be a much happier place "many reels ago", before the movie deals dried up, Lord's various marriages failed, and the actor became a bitter old recluse, and how sad life in the mansion has become since then. Milestone says of Lord, "He was my hero once, a thousand reels ago. Once he was even my friend." A scene where one of Lord's ex-wives sends a recorded message pleading for financal help for a medical procedure and Lord rejects her illustrates his bitterness. Milestone does do everything that he can to make the mansion as pleasant as possible but it seems an uphill effort. His boss just complains about everything and is never made any less bitter.
However, one day the butler gets help in that effort from a supernatural source. The butler is on a shopping trip when he sees and buys a Maltese Falcon-like statue of a bird. Milestone takes the statue home hopping to make the statue part of a decorative exhibit he is building. He hopes that the exhibit will cheer up the atmosphere at the mansion but Jonathan Lord complains about the exhibit as well. Tired of his boss's constant complaints, Milestone flies into a rage and storms out of the house.
A short time afterwards, Milestone is kidnapped by someone from his own past with a grudge against him. The kidnapper blames Milestone for a career-ruining injury he suffered during a movie stunt and now plans to kill him.
Jonathan Lord is left alone in the mansion when the bird statue suddenly comes to life. The bird says something about restoring Jonathan Lord to what he once was and then ensnares him in a fiery display. A short time later Bobby Milestone is rescued from his kidnapper by a man who looks just like Jonathan Lord did when he played in the film Silverblade. Milestone falls unconscious and is carried back to the Lord Mansion. When he awakens there Milestone cannot believe what he sees. Lord is indeed dressed as he did in that film and his natural aging process has been reversed more than fifty years. At the end of the first issue, the reader learns that the bird has given Lord the power to genuinely transform into every character he portrayed on film. This ability makes the actor young again, enables him to rescue his butler from his kidnapper and gives Jonathan Lord a second chance at happiness. For all intents and purposes, this power also turns him into a superhero.
A series of crises and bizarre episodes later, Jonathan Lord finally settles down with his bitterness and depression behind him and the series ends with issue #12.
[edit] Beyond the maxiseries
DC Comics heroes often appear in other series, however the characters in this series have never been seen again... yet. However, it seems this series is still in continuity and may be returned to in the future. Recent references to the Silverblade story include The All-New Atom #4, which features a movie theatre which is showing Silver Blade II, and 52 #22 which has an advertisement on the back window of a bus promoting Silverblade Returns - due for release 10.13.06.
