American Vampire #15 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Rafael Albuquerque (art), Dave McCaig (colors), Pat Brosseau (letters), Joe Hughes (assistant editor) & Mark Doyle (editor)

The Story: Henry’s gang of vampire hunter/soldiers runs for their lives on the Japanese island of Taipan in WWII.

What’s Good: Fun and exciting story?  Check!  A sense of mystery?  Check!  Great art?  Check!  I feel like I say those things every month about American Vampire and it is truly one of the most consistently excellent books on the market.  Seriously, if you haven’t been reading, get the first two hardcovers and catch up.

The first couple of issues of this story arc had a lot of ground to cover to establish this story: Henry joining the U.S. military and being sent with a team of secret vampire-killer commandos to deal with possible vampires on the Japanese held island of Taipan and keep the vampires from interfering with U.S. forces landing on the island.  All of this is set against the backdrop of Henry and Pearl’s strained relationship as he ages and she doesn’t and whatever schemes Skinner Sweet and the secret society of vampire hunters back at Pearl Harbor have going.  What’s great about all the plotting and scheming is the reader never gets the feeling that says, “I know what’s going to happen next!”  Life is too short to read predictable stories and given how inundated a modern reader is with “story” in all forms of media, it is a real testament to Snyder & Albuquerque that they can keep us guessing about what’s next.

This is also a mostly all-action, run-for-your-fucking-life kinda of story as these weird feral vampires descend upon our band of soldiers.  One thing stands out in this action further drives home what a gifted writer Snyder is.  At one point, one of the soldiers is rapidly transformed into a feral vampire and comes after the good guys.  Snyder proceeds to show us the scene where the other characters pause to discuss how their vampiric buddy [paraphrasing] “didn’t even know who we were.  he just came after us”.  That scene can be pretty cliché because we’ve all seen it countless times in vampire/zombie movies, but Snyder is able to power through the cliché by wrapping it with a discussion of the nature of these new vampires (and probably a little bit of accumulated good will from the entirety of the series).  It just goes to show that some writers can pull off a challenging scene when other folks would struggle.

Oh yeah, and I can’t wait to see what the hell Skinner is up to.  He’s just kinda bouncing along on this mission and you wonder if he’ll turn on the good guys?  And what’s with the new human villains at the end?  Good stuff all around.

Albuquerque’s art is really strong on this issue.  Readers have seen so many horror movies, the idea of establishing a sense of dread in a comic book is really hard.  It isn’t that you can’t do it, but you have to pick the right images to unsettle the reader.  The Page 1 splash is a great example as these freaky looking feral vampires (that are only vaguely humanoid) just come boiling out of a hut to attack the soldiers.  That image alone would probably be enough to say, “Holy crap!  Run!”  But, Albuquerque doesn’t stop there with this panel; tThe nature of the panel leaves the top right corner open, so Albuquerque puts a single vampire in the foreground in silhouette.  This single addition (a) tells us that the soldiers are surrounded without them having to yell, “We’re surrounded.” and (b) enhances the sense of depth to the panel by adding a third plane of action: foreground, middle and background.  And, it adds the foreground without interfering with the main characters being in the middle where you can see them.  Very nice.

What’s Not So Good: Just little stuff… For example, I can’t remember these soldier’s names or the name of the ancient sect of vampire hunters that they belong to.  It’s times like this that DC’s steadfast refusal to include a recap page really burns my butt because the only other alternative is to include a lot of exposition heavy dialog that would remind the reader of an old issue of Claremont’s X-Men with Wolverine talking about his adamantium claws and skeleton in each issue.  C’mon DC!  Your readers are old and sometimes we can’t remember things like the names of our extended family members or co-worker’s spouses, much less the names we saw one time in a comic book.  🙂

Conclusion: Very strong issue that cranks up some of the action that Snyder and Albuquerque having been building towards for a few months.  They also unveil some new mysteries and the reader has no clue what will happen next.  And, you’re not going to find better art anywhere.

Grade: A-

-Dean Stell

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