Anita Blake Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures
Parental Advisory
Written by: Laurell K. Hamilton & Jess Ruffner-Booth
Illustrated by: Brett Booth & Ron Lim
Released by: Marvel
I’ve never read the Anita Blake series before so this was new to me. I do have to admit I don’t really like adaptations of books into graphic novels. I just think it loses a lot of its value and doesn’t translate well into this type of format. That’s just me though.
This is the second collected volume in the series, collecting issues #7-#12. The story begins with Anita and Phillip at a party…a rather wild party of feral vampires. They are pretending to be lovers so that Anita can track down the vampire killer. And in order to fit in a bit better and throw off another vampire, Phillip bites Anita, which of course she is less than pleased about. She walks away to clear her head and interrupts a group of vampires and an animator attempting to raise a zombie. The two animator’s work together to raise the zombie for the vampires who proceed to torture it. Anita and Phillip escape and Anita heads to a crime scene…another vampire has been brutally murdered, and this time its someone Anita recognizes. Soon thereafter Antia and Phillip are summoned to meet with the Master, Nikolaos, and someone unexpectedly dies. Anita sets off again in the hunt of the vampire killer, this time she’s not alone. Edward, another vampire hunter, joins her in the chase. They invade Nikolaos’s lair with the intention of killing her and discover the identity of the real vampire killer…someone that no one expects.
The story line moves along quickly enough and you can pick up most of whats going on easily enough, even without reading the first collected volume. However, there really isn’t a lot of depth to the story. Its mostly action just lots of action with vampires constantly being killed or Anita having her life threatened. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that its an adaptation of a full length novel. 368 pages of pure text are reduced to a mix of images and words. One nice thing is that they include a “previously” at the front of the book. So if you haven’t read the series before (or forgot what happened) it gives a nice little recap for you. The artwork is decent enough, although it has a very muted color scheme. Whether this is to fit in with the tone of the story or if its the printing I’m not really sure. One big complaint out of me is that all of the characters have the same exact body build, perfect. All the males look like Greek Adonis’s without an ounce of body fat and the females look like super models that can kick your butt. Not a fat vampire in the bunch. Frankly it just makes everyone look nonlife like, they lack that air of vitality and reality that makes a comic come alive. One small saving point for the unrealistic style is that even though the killings are rather bloody, they won’t cause nightmares for being too graphic.
If you’re a fan of the book series then you’ll enjoy seeing the characters drawn in real life. Or if you’re a fan of vampire comics this could be your cup of tea. Otherwise not so much.
