Vampire, PA #3
Written and Illustrated by: J.C. Vaughn, Brendon & Brian Fraim
Released by: Moonstone
When I wrote the review of the first issue in this series I wasn’t all that thrilled with it. The series is coming into an overcrowded genre and instantly draws comparisons to two stalwarts in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Blade. So what do I think now?
Well…we’ve now come to the third and final issue (for now) of Vampire, PA. Unknown vampires have kidnapped Dee-Dee and Dean is on the hunt for her. There are lots of battles as Dean works his way through the vampires in town hunting for Dee-Dee, until he gets to Jocelyn’s residence. He finds Jocelyn, finds out where Dee-Dee is…and kills her. They rescue Dee-Dee and kill a few more vampires while they are at it. And in the end? Dee-Dee is…different. And Jocelyn is still alive and apparently planned the entire thing. But what happens next?
This is probably some of the best writing of the series. It has a tight timeline where everything happens over the course of a couple days. It’s easy to follow and there are no plot holes in this issue (yay!). Honestly, I think this is what the series really needed, a focused mission where J.C. can show off his writing chops and have Dean be a badass vampire hunter. My biggest gripe in this issue is Larry the vampire. Larry is supposed to be the “funny” vampire and seems to be channeling a bit too much of Jack Black. Overall though the writing is great in this issue and they leave it on a great cliffhanger.
The artwork really hasn’t grown much since the beginning and in this issue it seems to regress a bit. In some places its almost like someone else drew/colored the pictures which causes a bit of confusion for me. For example, in the other issues the vampires were easy to identify because they were all pale skin, I mean really pale, compared to the rest of the characters, even if they were standing in lighting. Yet, in this issue they have skin color in some places, especially in one of the battle scenes. I mean its obviously supposed to be vampires, I just don’t understand why the change. Also, in a couple of places it looks like the holy water being sprayed out of the gun is a rather thick gum.
After a rough start in the first issue the series improved it’s timing and pacing. It still didn’t answer all of the questions that I had from the beginning, but it had a nice storyline at the end and I want to see what happens to the characters. They’ve got some interesting characters (and thankfully killed the “funny” vampire) and a good plot to continue with. So what do I think overall? I think it has some potential, but these first three issues really didn’t add anything new to the genre and they still don’t match up to the comparisons I made in the first review with Buffy and Blade. I just wish they had tried something a bit different with the genre and perhaps in future issues they will. I’ll still give future issues a chance, but I would only really recommend the series to die hard vampire fans.
