By: Joshua Hale Fialkov (story), Andrea Sorrentino (art), Marcelo Maiolo (colors)
The Story: As it turns out, the undead feeding on the undead is only a good idea in theory.
The Review: Considering how many titles I picked up within the first month of the DC relaunch (thirty-one) and how many I added along the way (twelve) and how many I still keep up with (twenty-six), it’s actually quite an achievement for I, Vampire to have stuck around on my pull list for this long. Honestly, I would’ve guessed that I’d drop I, Vampire long before I dropped Teen Titans or Legion Lost, so this series has surpassed my expectations in many ways.
But upon some reflection, this title really stopped doing that somewhere shortly after the first two or three issues. What drew me to the series in the first place—what convinced me that I wouldn’t just be reading Twilight in a comic book (which probably ranks up there in my Things I Would Commit a Felony Not to Do list) was both the complex relationship between Andrew and Mary and the conflicting ideologies they embodied.
Somewhere along the way, Fialkove lost sight of the fact that these were the qualities which distinguished I, Vampire from the pack. There have been a lot of distractions: largely pointless guest appearances by Batman and the Justice League Dark or the brief, nearly as pointless resurrection of the source of all human evil, or whatever. What exactly did any of these things do except twist the whole vampire rebellion/movement plotline into nonsensical directions?
And now with an army of zombie Van Helsings in the picture, we can officially classify the original driving core of this series as lost. Fialkov does away with emotional or ideological warfare entirely in favor of a mindless one. When Tig and John try haphazardly to land a massive warplane through the Utah canyons, only to have to frantically run from a self-destruct sequence Van Helsing left behind, it just exemplifies the over-the-top action ridiculousness that this series has become now. At one point, Andrew incredulously observes, “So…zombie vampire vampire hunters?” as if even he can’t believe this is what it’s come to. I could live with this kind of series, honestly, but it’s not what I bought into the title for.
But he has only himself to blame. After all, he cooks up one of the most spectacularly shortsighted and stupid (read: halfassed) plans I’ve read in the past six months. In explaining his rationale for having John and Tig bring the Van Helsings here to confront his own vampires, he hoped that the vampire hunters would merely “contain them. Two armies locked in an eternal standoff.” Because historically vampire slayers are all about deterrence rather than, you know, actual slayage.
To his credit, Sorrentino has played gamely along with whatever Fialkov’s dreamed up for the script, giving each issue a unified look that the story itself doesn’t earn. There’s an understated, non-hammy way Sorrentino treats every scene so that it doesn’t occur to you, on its face, to be totally nonsensical until you think it through. I would like to see Sorrentino get work on another supernatural series if this one ever gets canned—and I personally think that outcome is not long in coming. But then, I never thought Deathstroke or Batwing would last this long either.
Conclusion: Nearly a year later, I feel like I haven’t gotten anywhere with this title and it honestly feels like Fialkov has decided to just let his ideas lead him anywhere it so chooses, which can only produce uneven results. Dropped.
Grade: C+
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – Has anyone noticed how overwhelmingly male the vampire population is? Didn’t realize there was so much sexism going on with undead bloodsuckers.