There was a poll taken a few months back.  They asked comic book readers which comics they were planning to purchase.  Unfortunately I,  Vampire was the bottom of the list.  And based on reading this book, I don’t think it belongs on the bottom, there some things worth reading in the book.

The star of the book is a vampire, and his girl friend is a vampire.  But all the teen angst of the twilight series or vampire diaries does not seem to be in this comic.  At least not yet.  I was afraid that DC was dusting off an old vampire property, just so they could get in on the vampire craze.  I think they are a little behind as zombies are the ‘new vampires’.

The story telling style is a bit sophisticated.  He alternates between two time periods and doesn’t do much to help the reader make the transition.  He trust in the reader to figure it out by visual ques; he doesn’t put ‘previously’ or ‘now’ text boxes to help the reader.  But sometimes I think he should.  There are a few times where dialogue from one scene is going on during another scene.  While this transposition is challenging, sometimes it’s just annoying and frustrating.  Still the idea of vampire army fighting in a super-hero world has so much potential.  I’m hoping they can gain readers to they can pursue that vision.

The art nice.  It is very stylized as all the character’s features are angular and a bit oversized, But since they are vampires, it fits the mood.  I’m not sure how it will look when a recognizable character like Superman shows up.  But it fits.

C+    —- Don

I’m a sucker for C-list characters who used to only show up in backup stories or DCU handbooks, and “I, Vampire” is one of those characters, so I had to check this out. I had pretty low expectations, as early press painted this is as the kind of book that would be trying to pander to the “Twlight” crowd a couple of years too late. It doesn’t look like that’s the case, though.

The art is very reminiscent of Jae Lee, with all that entails – it looks really cool but can occasionally be confusing. The coloring is limited, which feels appropriate given the feel of the book, but it also helps obfuscate the scene changes and even the looks of characters. My biggest complaint has to be the text boxes that show us what characters off-panel are saying – they’re colored red and… uh… a slightly darker red. That means that under anything but direct, bright light, it looks like one person participating in two sides of a conversation. I know red=blood, blah blah blah, but come on, there has to be a less limited color choice for text boxes than two similar shades of red.

Since none of the other DC books have mentioned a gigantic vampire war so far, I don’t think the scope of this book will be as far-reaching as it indicates in the first issue, but that’s not a bad thing, just don’t get readers’ hopes up that this will have a noticeable and lasting effect on the status quo of the DCU in general.

B  — Ed