The reason I bought issue #1 was the art. I already knew I liked the words - there are some paragraphs I can quote from memory because I am a nerd - but I wanted to see if the creative team behind this adaptation could provide a visual accompaniment that meshed with the one I had built up over decades of familiarity with the text. Thrillingly, they have. In every phase of the story they have presented strong visuals that help tell the story in ways far more efficient and demanding than the text alone could do. The first page was all about the use of a recording medium, a typewriter; the second page was a huge, open, beautiful image - blue sky, green grass, a road that connects two places unknown to us - of a remote, wild part of the world. With those two pages I was sold.

Those are the two most essential elements of the story of Dracula: that the story is a concluded history, unchangeable by the reader and in fact physically separated from them by the barriers of a narrator and her technologies, and that it happens in places that are remote and removed from any external rescue. Even when the plot moves through London, it happens in the cells of an asylum, the moldering basement of an aged manse, the high walls of a locked cemetery. Issues #1 and #2 both create amazing visual spaces that glide easily between the huge, open, helpless hunts and the cramped, terrifying claustrophobias experienced by the characters at different times.

All the art, which is mostly done by Colton Worley, is digitally painted. He's stated in interviews that he sometimes starts from a sketch but that the finished page is entirely painted and done so without a physical canvas or pigments. The degree of effort and detail he's put into the pages, and the conscious design sense of each page - huge, full-page images with smaller overlays of more restricted scenes - are a big part of what make reading this such a special experience. This is Worley's first comic book and it shows in the best possible way. He doesn't try to draw freaks, he paints portraits. He humanizes the art and the subjects of that art in a way that I think is very necessary if the reader is to sympathize with the struggles of these late Victorians, characters who think themselves so modern that the supernatural isn't merely frightening, it's offensive.

The incredible art found in issues #1 and #2 are actually the source of my main beef with issue #3, as some factor or another caused other artists to be brought in on issue #3 and it shows. The art is still very nice but it doesn't hold up to the incredibly high bar set in issues one and two. The only exception would be the first images of a body laid out for viewing, which very effectively capture the ironic beauty of the dead, and the pages featuring the title character, whose presence on the page is appropriately and satisfyingly foreboding. Otherwise, I was left feeling like the art was... well, nice, I guess, but my socks were not knocked off. However, there are notes in the comic that Conley is back for issue #4, so I have high hopes (and, I have to admit, high expectations).

In terms of pacing the plot, I am impressed with the authors' ability to adapt and show restraint. They have managed to do a very good job of telling the story with minimal text. I know the novel sufficiently well that it's difficult for me to be an objective judge of it, however, because I can fill in any narrative gaps myself without noticing. Thus, I find it satisfying but for all I know everyone else is scratching their heads in confusion.

As to content, issue #3 deals with one of the most dramatic scenes in the novel: the death of the first vampire the protagonists are forced to destroy. In the novel this is the first time Stoker really takes the gloves off and talks about blood and injury and violence. It's the first time any of the supporting characters are forced to realize what they're dealing with and what will be demanded of them in future. The "camera" of the book, regardless of any beef I might have with the art itself, doesn't let us off the hook, either. Stoker shocked readers by focusing in on a moment of tragedy and horror rather than pulling back and leaving their imaginations to do the work and the creative team behind The Complete Dracula stuck to that same path to tremendous effect. The killing of that first vampire is a shocking scene, and it should be. It's very well done. It's so good, in fact, that it leaves me regretting even more that this issue's art wasn't quite up to the bar set by #1 and #2.

Overall, though, I have found this series extremely enjoyable and in no way offensive to the natural protective instincts of a Dracula fanboy. It's now on the list of things I try to make my friends read at random, putting it up there with Detective Comics and Muppet Robin Hood in my current pantheon of good reads. Highly recommended, especially if you're looking for a way to get good and scared for Saturday.