Bar Gags And Animal Cruelty: I, Vampire #14 Review

I’ve honestly missed the last several issues of I, Vampire – not because it’s a bad book or one that I don’t like, but the ugly reality is that, when you spend the week writing 1,200 word reviews of comics, it is impossible to read one while you’re writing about another, sometimes because of the pure, inexorable nature of time, other times because it’s hard to type and read when you’re already holding a glass of whiskey.

However, after finishing yesterday’s vaguely frustrating read of this week’s Angel & Faith, I figured it was as good an opportunity as any to check back in with the book. Because after reading an vampire story that seemingly blithely chucked aside the plot that had been driving the story, I thought it might be comforting to revisit vampire Andrew Bennett and his eternal war against his darker nature, and against his girlfriend Mary’s efforts to turn vampires into the ascendant race on the planet Earth.

So yeah, funny story: at some point in the last few months? It seems Andrew lost.

So here we have yet another vampire comic that, at some point, has taken its status quo and turned it on its head, reversing pretty much everything you’d expect from the book. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad… but it does mean that I’m not entirely sure what in the hell is going on.

Crossdressing: I, Vampire #6 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And one last review before the comic stores open…

I tuned out of I, Vampire after protagonist Andrew Bennett left Boston for Gotham City. I figured that we just in for yet another meeting of a vampire and Batman, and besides: being from Boston, I was getting a charge out of seeing a major comic set in my town. Maybe I was being unrealistic, but I sort of hoped that we’d see Mary, Queen of The Vampires, take a bite out of David Ortiz and grow about three horse testicles in her armpits.

So robbed of the chance to see some Boston University knuckleheads get bled out on Lansdowne Street, I checked out for a little while, and I clearly shouldn’t have. Because sometime between then and now, all the shit has hit the fan.

The book opens in some kind of gothic building (A subway station? A church? Being Gotham, maybe a 7-Eleven?) with Bennett, some allies and yes, Batman, fighting about a scrillion vampires. And it is an impressive scene… and it says something about the state of the modern vampire story that I’ve written and deleted about seven different “sparkling vampires” jokes just now.

I, Read This – Review Of I, Vampire #1

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: guy meets girl. Guy becomes vampire. Guy bites girl. Girl turns into psychotic hell bitch bent on world destruction. You have? Well, then apparently you’ve met my downstairs neighbor. Or, more likely, you read I, Vampire, either in its current release or in it’s original incarnation, as a short story series in House of Mystery, when it was written by J.M. DeMatteis, between 1981-1983.

The relaunch is written by Joshua Hale Fialkov, whose run of good luck will soon see him taking over writing duties at IDW for Doctor Who as well. He is joined on I, Vampire by Andrea Sorrentino, whose work can previously be seen on God Of War and X-Files: 30 Days Of Night, published by Wildstorm.

Now, to the important question: should you read this book? Answers (and spoilers) after the jump.