Chastity #1: Digital Exclusive Edition (Chastity

Chastity (2014) #1

by Marc Andreyko, Dave Acosta (Illustrator)

In the 1980's and after a career-ending injury shatters her (and, really, her mother's) Olympic dreams, 17 year-old Chastity Marks finds an escape in a popular series of vampire novels... but little does she know that the novels conceal a secret underworld of blood, agony, and death - a world that she will be dragged into kicking and screaming. The classic Chaos! Character returns - reimagined, rebooted, and ready for blood! Join fan-favorite scribe MARC ANDREYKO (Batwoman, Torso, Manhunter) and artist Dave Acosta for the blood-curdling adventures of a girl who is most definitely NOT your father's vampire! Features exclusive behind the scenes content only available on comiXology!

29 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 9, 2014

About the author

Marc Andreyko is a comic book and screenplay writer, best known for writing the 2000s ongoing series Manhunter for DC Comics.

Reviews

[Lady Entropy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, a huge disclaimer.

I am a huge Chastity fangirl. HUGE. Chastity remains one of my all time favourite female characters in comics, and I spent a bit too much money acquiring alternate covers for comics I already owned because I just wanted a little bit more Chastity.

I was devastated when they shut down Chaos, because it meant no more Chastity even if the latest miniseries weren't doing it for me.

So, this 1 might actually be a 2 if you are not like me, a huge Chastity fangirl.

But here's the problem, when you read Original Chastity, this book suffers from the very serious case of "Remake Syndrome". It's such tripe and so unnecessary that you wonder WHY have they done it, if they couldn't do any better?

Okay, let's start point by point:

ORIGIN STORY:
- OC (original Chastity) was a girl with high ambitions and a tragic situation: set in the late 70s, she wanted to be a proper actress, she was incredibly talented, but her mother was both a victim and an enabler of her horrible stepfather. She ends up running away from home and make her way to London in hopes of getting a place in the Royal Shakespeare Academy. She is turned away, eventually finds her way to the PunkRock subculture as she tries to make a living, and ends up being Turned by an old greasy asshole vampire, who she fights off after he tries to feed off her. Since she didn't die, she turns into a vampire.

Note that in an interview, the author disses OC family as being a "violent, Rob Zombie movie family". While yes, I agree that there were bits that felt a bit too much, (raping her when she was a child, giving her a Farrah Fawcet-hairdo, etc.) it's not that much worse than her new mother, who is so ridiculously mean that it loses all impact (because she had to be killed shortly into issue 1 there was no time to develop her further than "your gymnastics skill are the only reason why I love you")

- NC (new Chastity) was a normal girl who had no particular ambitions: set in the 80s, she was a gymnast and had a loving family, except for her overbearing mother who wanted to live vicariously through her after her own gymnasts career got nixed. Chastity got injured, which enraged her mother, so she started to seek refuge in the vampire books of an author who is either the expy of Stephanie Meyer or Anne Rice (due to the time frame) but it seems to lean for the former. She goes meet her favourite author who decides to eat her. Just because. And she ends up as a vampire.

PERSONALITY:
- OC is active. When things become unbearable, she leaves, has a plan, and goes through with it. Despite setbacks, she trucks on, finds a way to survive and never submits. Her Turning is out of her control, yes, but she fights her enemy off which is what ends up allowing her to survive. From the start, she shows us she is an outsider, but she is also witty, endearing, snarky and doesn't linger on the bad (and oh, the bad. Her Stepfather molested her when she was a child).

- NC is a victim through and through, and passive like whoa. Her accident takes away her only defined trait (being a gymnast), and she earns her a second personality trait, being a Twihard. Her encounter with the Alyce, the author and vampiress, is a coincidence.

I can't get into a lot more debate without spoiling the following books, so lets talk about the art.

It's passable. A 2-star, even if it fights against the much superior Justiniano, a brawl it has no hope of winning. The design isn't too bad -- if it wasn't for the stupid chaps she is wearing. Please. PLEASE. Don't go back to the original outfit. It was ridiculous. PLEASE use the "Rocked" miniseries outfit, or the one she was using in her second action figure.

Again, I shouldn't spend too much time ranting, and having read the first 4 issues of Chastity miniseries, I can tell you this: DON'T READ THIS SERIES.

Go get the old Chastity mini-series. Do yourself a favour.

Note: I do not object to reimagining of beloved characters. I kinda liked Chastity: ReImagined. But this is, even independently of the original is NOT a good origin story. It makes it even worse when you take into consideration she's Purgatory's bitch in the crossover book, CHAOS -- if Chastity was the girl she was in OC, her victimization would be tragic and awesome. As she isn't, it just shows us, again, how weak and uninteresting she is. Also, jesus, why the 80s? What will be the connection to punk rock?