By: Victor Gischler (writer), Paco Medina (pencils), Juan Vlasco (inks), Marte Gracia (colors) & Joe Caramanga (letters)
The Story: Dracula comes back and another mutant falls to the vampires.
What’s Good: After the last issue, I was a little hard on some logical inconsistencies in the story (really??? you think it’s a good idea to bring back Dracula?). But, if you just unplug the part of your brain that demands that all comics make perfect sense, you’ll find a nicely paced and enjoyable story here.
Gischler is doing a good job with the storytelling as he is bouncing from scene-to-scene at just the right moments and I’m finding the action in all places to be interesting. And, I’ll go ahead and admit it… Even though it seems incredibly trendy in fanboy circles to piss and moan about vampires, I’m kinda enjoying the X-Men vs. “legion of vampires” story and this story continues with the digging into the hidden world of the bloodsuckers. I find it pretty neat learning little bits more about all the different types of vampires.
This issue also gets kudos for sending Wolverine off on a one-man mission to rescue Jubilee. Wolverine on his own, killing bad guys in dark places is almost as clichés as vampires, but I never get sick of seeing it and I much prefer this to him having someone like Storm following him along giving him a lecture about how “X-Men don’t kill…”
Finally, we get a classic comic book cliffhanger. I don’t put a lot of stock in what we see on the final page, but in an era when writing for the trade is common, it’s nice to see a good single issue.
What’s Not So Good: The art isn’t a resounding lead balloon and there are some really nice panels in here: Namor displaying Dracula’s severed head and an image of vampire Jubilee come immediately to mind. But, I have a couple of problems. One is that many of the characters look awfully stiff. Images of Wolverine crouching in the dark look more like he has a cramp and got stuck than look like he is coiled to spring and dispense bushels of death. I’m not sure how they do it, but some artists make stills look alive and I’m missing that here. There are also a lot of panels where the entire outline of the characters are inked with the same weight line. That can work really well (like in the Jubilee image), but when it is overdone I think it helps to blunt the dynamism of the characters.
No complaints about the story this month though.
Conclusion: Despite my ire at yet-another-X-book, this has been a fun story so far. Honestly, I’m enjoying this vampire story more than anything going on in Uncanny or Legacy right now.
Grade: B
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion