Review: American Vampire #1
I picked up the latest from Stephen King with some trepidation, for two reasons: it's his first foray into comics and it's about vampires, my most favorite fantasy monster of all. It turns out that I shouldn't have had any worries. This is a great issue and I'm really looking forward to the next one.
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Interestingly, the better of the two stories isn't the one by King, it's the one by his co-collaborator, Scott Snyder. Snyder's story takes up roughly the first half of the book, telling in flashback the story of a starry-eyed young actress trying to make it big in early Hollywood. There are a limited number of settings that are uniquely American and that is definitely one of them - and used to great effect. The story itself seeks out tragedy over gore and empathy over fear - regret instead of terror - and that's ultimately my preferred form of horror. The sad knowledge of what might have been has more impact on me than the fear of what might yet be.
I say Snyder's story is "better", but that doesn't mean King's story - the origin story for the vampire who will more or less star in this series - isn't also very good. It's an interesting and exciting set of twists on another of the uniquely American settings, the classic Western, complete with all that genre's most recognizable elements: a condemned criminal, Pinkertons, a train-based adventure and the depredations of early robber barons. It uses an uncomfortable psychological intimacy and the loss of control experienced when a plan unravels to generate its sense of dread, and that works, but it also presents what could fairly be read as a conclusion to its own narrative arc and a story with a resolution is always a little less compelling than a cliffhanger such as Snyder's.
The art by Rafael Albuquerque is beautiful and does a fantastic job of providing the highly stylized, almost embellished depiction that befits a story told as a memory, as both are. His human characters are all bright and attractive and interesting and the vampires range from intriguingly scruffy to bothersomely other. The classic archetypes of Professional Romantic Lead and, say, Victorious Law Man, all are depicted exactly according to type as fits both these stories but are still lively characters with a genuine presence on the page beyond that of a generic stereotype.
All in all, this was a really impressive storyline and the stinger to the book, in which the assumed narrator identifies himself as a living witness to events across many eras and decades, generated a great little frisson of anticipation. It definitely made me want to read more and whereas I picked it up merely curious about the book I am now impatient for more.
Klarion
Posted to Review on 22 March 2010
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: American Vampire, Hotties With Fangs, Stephen King, Vampires
Hey Klarion - thanks a lot for the review. Made my morning! S