VAMPIRES DON'T SPARKLE discussion

I'll be posting my reviews of vampire books here. I do have a few planned out to read and review this year.

Here's my first review of 2018...









FOUR FANGS

I used to be a big fan of the television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not at first but later, I didn't start to appreciate it till I got a little older (early twenties). After all, it is about a girl who is chosen to kill vampires. Angel was a great show too....they should have never canceled it at season five. Well, it was nice to return to BTVS, I had forgotten how good it is.

And this comic book great. It really feels like you are watching season eight of the TV show. Whedon's writing is excellent and the art is amazing. And since they don't have worry about the budget of a tv show, they can get away with more stuff in it. My only real pet peeve with this is that there are hardly any vampires in it. But that was sometimes the case with the TV show, other supernatural threats.

All in all a good read. Four Fangs. There are a ton of other books in this series, perhaps I'll read more of them.

awesome Dan!

Latasha wrote: "awesome Dan!"

Thanks

And here is my next book...








TWO FANGS

Had high hopes for this one, this was a mash-up I thought would be epic. I was interviewed in a podcast about vampire books back in August. When they asked me "what I thought of authors mixing vampires with other genres" this was one of the books I told them about cause I was fucking pumped about it.

Not a bad book, but a little bit of a letdown. So it got two fangs.

Nazi's invade Romania during World War II and the people turn to Abraham Van Helsing for help. Van Helsing decides to defeat one monster by unleashing another that he swore to keep locked up fifty years before. Count Dracula. Dracula is revived and sent to eat the Nazis. This gets Adolf Hitler's attention and he wants Dracula's power for himself.

Sounds bad-ass. Not so much

Drac was more of a misunderstood romantic anti-hero in this. I was expecting "evil vs. evil". More blood and gore with Dracula impaling Nazis all over the place and lapping up their blood. Not the case. True there is lots of action but not like I expected.

I also thought that to get the point across, the author should have shown more of the horrors of Nazi Germany and the holocaust. Hitler (view spoiler)[ doesn't even show up until the end of the book (hide spoiler)] which was infuriating!!

The author unnecessarily used to many complicated words throughout the book. Also, this thing might have been better if it was trimmed down to maybe 300 or 350 pages rather than 500. It seemed to drag a little bit. Not that the author is a bad writer.

Also, I don't hate this book. It was "just okay", not spectacular. That's why it got two fangs. There were some parts I liked, just not what I expected.

And now for my third...








FOUR FANGS!

This was pretty good. A splatterpunk vampire novel. The main character is a writer named Davey Owen who gets involved in a peep show/nightclub run by vampires. It kind of reminds me of the movie Vamp ( which does not get enough credit, it's quite good ).

A little slow at first but it picked up at the end. And Davey, a somewhat unlikeable character at first, redeems himself.

Real nasty, evil vamps in this book. No sparkly sissies here.

Fours fangs, good book! On to the next!!!

And for my fourth...






ONE WOODEN STAKE

Dracula is a book that has always been a favorite of mine. This graphic novel version however was a major dissapointment. The original material was hacked apart, text altered. I didn't care for the art either. This hightly overrated version bosts itself to be the most faithful to the original material...IT IS ANYTHING BUT!!! One wooden stake for this.

And now for my fifth...





FOUR BLOODY FANGS

This is another graphic novel adaptation of Dracula. I preferred this one to the one I read back in February...I was very disappointed in that one as you can see from my last review. This one, however, was awesome! Dracula has always been one of my favorite books, it's a story I like to revisit over and over again. This was adapted by a Spanish comic book artist by the name of Fernando Fernandez back in the eighties. It's beautifully painted, has great storytelling, and done in a very realistic style. And Fernandez really got the physical description of Count Dracula described by Bram Stoker down to a T.

Was it a truly faithful version? Not exactly. The text was changed but the core material of Stoker's Novel was respectfully preserved. So just look at is as the same story reworded. If the exact text was used however I would have given it five fangs instead of four. Still a great read though!

And for my sixth...





FOUR FANGS

This was a comic book anthology of short stories about vampires. It was originally published in Europe, then translated into English.
My favorite stories were...

1. Vampiritch
2. Cosmic Paula In The Pursuit of the Truly Irritated Vampire
3. Internet

I did not care for the last story in here though, but still a good anthology and a very quick read. Four Fangs!

And for my seventh...







THREE FANGS

I love this series, I do. And this book was good...but a little weird.

Famous vampire hunter Luara Caxton gets sent to prison and locked up in the SHU program ("shoe"), the harshest prison sentence you can get. They lock you in a small room for 23 Hours (hence the title) and let you out for one hour a day of exercise and one shower per week.

Vampires attack the prison....and this is where it gets weird...turning the CO's into half-deads and feeding of the prisoners, etc. One part, which I will not spoil here, had me laughing so hard my face turned red.

The ending had a twist that even M. Night Shyamalan would not attempt.

But it was still an okay book, that's why it get three fangs.

I'm onto the next book in the series, 32 Fangs. This is supposed to be the last one, I want to see how Wellington ends this.

And now for my eighth...





FOUR FANGS

Well, that was a good way to end the series. Laura Caxton hiding out as a fugitive for two years hellbent on ending Justina Malvern, the last vampire, once and for all. The book jumped back and forth between Caxton's story and Malvern's backstory. Which was kind of cool I guess. I didn't want to feel sorry for Malvern...I just wanted her to be evil. She was evil though. It seemed to drag a little bit and was a little weird in certain places, but it's still a good book. I liked the way Wellington ended it., And Wellington writes an afterword saying what motivated him to write this was that he wasn't happy with the way vampires are portrayed today in literature...which I can totally relate to.

I like the way he ended it. I love this series!!! Maybe I'll read 13 Bullets again or at least listen to it on audible.
Four Fangs!

For my ninth...





FIVE BLOODY FANGS

This graphic novel adaptation of Dracula is brilliant. Beautifully illustrated by the late Dick Giordano and written by Roy Thomas. The artwork is in black and white, Stunning and very realistic! The writing is kept extremely faithful to the original material! I would recommend this to any Dracula fan. It's much better adaptation than that shitty The Complete Dracula

And number ten...






THREE FANGS


To sum the whole thing up...short and to the point. It was only 32 pages long, only so much material (if any at all with Dracula) you can cover with that many pages. I sort of feel like this thing was written for very young children.

Illustrative quality is decent. Some of the storytelling is confusing. Panel layouts which Scott Mcloud points out as No-No's in Making Comics.

The key points in the novel...the memorable ones...are the ones that are presented. I feel that the greatest crime in this adaptation is that at the end the Count is killed with a wooden stake.

I feel like they wanted to make this book longer but it was cut very very short which is sad.

I still prefer Dick Giordano's version and Staz Johnson's version.

And for number eleven...





TWO FANGS

Okay, Horror comedy is hard, I get that. Hard to balance the two...like walking on a knife's edge. That was...alright I guess. A little campier than the original film.

This book is supposed to explain what happened between the original film, The Lost Boys and Lost Boys: The Tribe. That's the sequel that's not even worth seeing if you haven't already, don't waste two hours of your life. This book was better than that film though (the sequel). . The rest of it wove a tail of rumors of Lost Boys sequels that were going on for years like the Frog brothers killing political vampires in Washington D.C., Lost Girls, Grandpa kind of being a vampire, etc. Some of it was good but most of it was downright corny. Like I said...Horror/Comedy...not easy to pull off.

But this book was okay. At least we see David in the story and other references to the original Lost Boys...I liked that.

I liked the artwork. The colors really brought the whole thing to life.

There is another, recent Lost Boys comic book, I just ordered it on Amazon. I'll be reading that next and hope it's a better read than this.

And now for my last review of 2018...







FIVE BLOOD SOAKED FANGS!!!

YEAH!!!!! NOW THAT'S HOW YOU DO A SEQUEL TO THE LOST BOYS!!!

Everyone knows in the nineties there were several attempts by Joel Schumacher to make a Lost Boys sequel, but it never worked out. I've read a couple of the scripts, they are pretty good, sad it never happened. Instead, twenty years later, we got those crappy straight to DVD sequels that I'm not even going to go into.

But this totally made up for it! Ever since I was a kid I'd wished they'd make a comic book out of The Lost Boys, and now we have one!!!

Okay, I'll try not to give away too much and I'll hide spoilers where needed. The story takes place in Santa Carla, 1987 several weeks after the events in the original film. A new gang of vamps is in town known as "the blood belles" (female vampires, like Joel Schumacher, envisioned for his sequel) along with (view spoiler)[David! (hide spoiler)] That's right he's back! He (view spoiler)[survived being impaled on those antlers by Michael Emerson at the end of the film (because they weren't made of wood) (hide spoiler)]. The Blood Belles (view spoiler)[ kill the resident vampire hunters in Santa Carla in an explosion (hide spoiler)] including (view spoiler)[Grandpa, who get's bit by a vampire (hide spoiler)]. Bummer. It's up to The Frog Brothers, Sam, Michael and Star to put a stake in their plans to reign terror on Santa Carla. Only they will discover that there is a bigger, deadlier threat sleeping beneath the town. They must seek out a mysterious saxophone playing vampire hunter known as "the believer" to fight it.
Yeah, remember this guy?

That's Tim Cappello in real life. He's Tina Turner's saxophone player among other things.
The story was not too campy, which was good.

Onto the art. Scott Godlewski did the lineart, his style is kind of a cross between Sean Murphy and Rafael Albuquerque. Now those guys are good...and he's good. However, I feel that a Lost Boys comic deserves a slightly more realistic style to it. And the colorist didn't get those damned eyes right. Ever notice the vampires' eyes in the film? there's something eerie and mesmerizing about the way those eyes looked. Those creepy yellow eyes...



But maybe I'm being too nit-picky, at least the story kicked ass! Tim Seeley knows how to write. And the ending is left open for more. I hope they do that!! I hope there are more Lost Boys comic books in the near future!!

I love this book! FIVE BLOOD SOAKED FANGS!!!!

Well, I was able to squeeze one last book into my 2018 vampire reads....





Three Fangs

This is the sequel to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. However, it primarily follows the story of Henry Sturges, the vampire who taught Abe how to fight in the first book, as he travels through the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, being involved in several important historical events.

Along the way he meets a number of famous people such as Bram Stoker, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack the Ripper, Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt, Rusputin, Elliot Ness, Howard Hughes and Jonn F. Kennedy.

Think of it as a history class with vampires in it!

Even though this was a good book, I liked the first one better. But it was at least worth three fangs!