This is a comic series written by Scott Snyder, the man behind the recent Batman storyline that I loved so much. In this series, like with 40 Days of Night, the goal is to put the terror back into the vampire myth. He is aided in the first volume by none other than Stephen King. I hear he's pretty scary too, but I only have a sample size of Carrie, which is admittedly pretty awesome.
Vol. 1 - This story flashes back and forth between the 1870s and Hollywood in the roaring 20s. In the origin plot line we learn how infamous outlaw Skinner Sweet becomes the first of a new breed of vampire: the American Vampire. The basic idea is that, like in the X-men, every once in a while, the genetics of the vampire virus mutate and cause a new breed to emerge. Skinner Sweet is a vampire who is recharged by sunlight, but is weakest during the new moon. His other main weakness we will discover is gold. (It figures that the American Vampire would have a toxic relationship to gold.) Anyway, Skinner is a sadistic psychopath in the realm of Angelus or the Joker. And this is before he becomes an immortal killing machine. Once changed, he begins a slow systematic destruction of the lawmen that almost caught him. Fathers, wives, children, entire towns are massacred before he is stopped, temporarily of course. We pick up the story in the 1920s where we are introduced to some new major characters and well as the descendents of Skinner's previous reign of terror who are out for vengeance.
Vol. 2 & 3 continue the storyline, covering the 1930's and 1940's. The world is expanded and we learn that there are many breeds of vampires, but the common Carpathian (dracula) variety are by far the most numerous, having created a worldwide secret society bent of acquisition of power and the genocide of all other races of vampire. We also learn about the human society dedicated to the destruction of all vampires everywhere. It is into this framework that Skinner Sweet and his fellow American Vampires introduce an element of chaos. Skinner is a completely despicable character, but the world is bigger than he is so despite is massive power, he has to play the angles from time to time. Give him an opening though, and he'll probably murder your wife and infect your newborn baby just for kicks.
I really like this new twist on the vampire mythos. There is a brutality to this series that you would expect when dealing with monsters. Characters aren't safe, and could be killed off at any point. Amidst all the blood and gore, we do get some great human moments with our cast of characters that continually give a sense of stakes and weight to the carnage. It's a tricky balance to find, but this series has been mostly successful so far. The one thing I would say is that the character of Skinner Sweet can be to charismatic for his own good. Like any great villain, they run the risk of being too compelling to stay scary. He is your worst nightmare, but while he is safely contained in the pages of the book, you can't help but root for him to find a way to survive to the next issue. It's a good problem to have though, and Scott Snyder has done an admirable job so far of keeping mostly to the scary side of that line. If you are in the market for a really great horror series, and zombies aren't your thing, you need to check this out.
10/10
No comments:
Post a Comment