3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. I mostly enjoyed the story, it has the feel of an old samurai movie, the kind you'd see on the Saturday matinee on a local t.v. channel in the '70s. Like some of the old samurai movies, the story gets kinda slow at times, but the fight scenes are great, so it's all good. The artwork is the real star here, the colors used and the way the inking was done bringing to mind the later works of the ukiyo-e artists of Japan, giving the text a very cinematic feel.

#ColdBloodSamuraiVolume1 #NetGalley

A pretty comic, but I couldn't help feel it belittled and acted culturally insensitively to the Samurai tradition, and the whole genre of Japanese action stories, by having a lizard fight against a turtle on behalf of the frogs. Or something – I never really gelled with this, as you can tell. It looks fine, but I never got a grip on which character was which enough to actually begin to care. Done straight I might have liked this visit to the Land of the Rising Amphibian – er, Sun, I meant Sun – but done like this it's just too oddball for me. One and a half stars, and that's as credit to the artist.

'Cold Blood Samurai Vol. 1' with story by Massimo Rosi and art by Ludovica Ceregatti is a samurai story featuring anthropomorphic reptiles. My first reaction was that I've seen this before. I was pleasantly surprised.

In this story, frogs are the native species and others are the gaijin. A war is started over the death of an important child, and the war is pretty ruthless. A fierce samurai warrior who is a salamander has suffered a great loss. He has learned under an almost mythical teacher. He offers his skills in exchange for the one thing he wants: an honorable death.

I found it a bit hard to get in to this story. By the time the story ended, it made sense, and I enjoyed it. Part of it is that all the characters are reptiles, and the color scheme is similar. Ludovica Ceregatti makes the characters distinctive enough and I really liked the art.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Action Lab Entertainment, Diamond Book Distributors, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.