American Vampire, Vol. 1

Hm. Now, I like me some vampires. I prefer the gothic/scary kind, not the paranormal romance kind. I like my vampires sinister, mostly evil, maybe a little emo or exhausted. So of course, I'm going to look into something called ‘American Vampire.' I really wanted to like it, but part of me suspected I might not be totally into it.

I wasn't totally into it. The art was all right, but not my personal favorite. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't handle the story. It just wasn't my preference. The story though...Now, we all know I love me some Stephen King. But the story was just bloody boring. Even his part of the story was boring.

Hollywood, 1925. Young starlet gets to meet big film maker. He and his posse are vampires and eat her. But she gets inexplicably gets saved by our titular vampire Skinner Sweet, because, presumably, she's cute and spunky. Yawn. She gets revenge on the bad Euro-vamps. But she and Skinner are NEW, SHINY, differently evolved AMERICAN VAMPIRES, so they can walk around in the daylight, they can drip blood on people and vamp them.

The book also gets into Skinner's backstory, back in the Wild West, tra la la. And that part is dull too, with a goofy romance added, I assume, because the characters come back into it later. I don't find Skinner all that disturbing or engaging.

I really didn't care for the mythology. The writers acted as though walking around in daylight has never before been part of the vampire mythology. And I find it hard to believe a vampire wouldn't have been turned in America long before 1880, but I suppose that is irrelevant.

I'll look into volume 2 to see if it improves, but so far I am not into Skinner.