American Vampire #4 – Review

By: Scott Snyder & Stephen King (writers), Rafael Albuquerque (art), Dave McCaig (colors) & Steve Wands (letters)

The Story: Pearl, the new American Vampire, finds a potential ally in her fight against the Euro-vamps.  And, in the past, we continue to follow Skinner Sweet and learn a little more about the weaknesses of American Vampires.

What’s Good: I can say that after issue #4 that this is going to really be a good comic series.  “What do you mean?  You’ve loved this comic so far?”, you say.  What I mean by that is that I’m a sucker for novelty so I love the first few issues of a lot of comics.  Heck, I enjoyed the first couple issues of Azrael.  But, by issues #4, you had better have built some good story or I’ll stop caring.

So, we knew that this comic would have some cool vampire scenes and great art from Rafael Albuquerque, but I think it’s also pretty clear that Scott Snyder has built a story that is compelling.  I’m very interested and curious about what will happen with Pearl and her war against the old Euro-vampires.  It’s also a good plot development that she has a boyfriend (and former Marine) to help her in this war.  Everyone knows that Marines kick ass!

The highlight of the Skinner Sweet story is that we’re learning some of the weaknesses of the American Vampire.  One of the things that gets tiresome about vampires is that they have the “rules”: no sunlight, no garlic, blah, blah….  And those rules are pretty much the same in every form of media, so much so that the viewer/reader pretty much knows the rules going into the story.  Here there is a sense of discovery as we learn what the American Vampires can/can’t do.

Of course, it almost goes without saying that Rafael Albuquerque’s art is great.  I could look at this stuff all day!  I would say that his style is perfect for this kind of Old West-themed book, but I’d bet he can do a variety of styles.