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Dracula: The Company of Monsters #1
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Creator/Story: Kurt Busiek
Writer: Daryl Gregory
Art: Scott Godlewski
Cover: Dan Brereton
Variant: Ron Salas
Price: US $3.99
Release Date: August 25, 2010

***CAUTION: This Review Contains Spoilers!***

1462.  Vlad III of Wallachia.  The Impaler Prince.  Lord Dracula.  He was a brutal and vicious ruler.  He was a pure savage to his enemies.

1471.  Vlad is high among the scholars in the Scholomance, a college of dark sorcery.

1476.  Vlad is beheaded by assassins sent by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.  His head is sent back to the Sultan in a block of honey from Wallachia.  (Does this preserve DNA like amber does?  You can make dinosaurs from the blood pulled from ancient mosquitoes trapped in amber, you know.)  Later, a topless servant girl melts away the honey encasing with the water of a bloodied fountain.  She’s been on a killing spree.  With naked boobiness.  Vlad’s eyes open.  (Cue music!  REE!  REE!  REE!  REE!)

2010.  Evan works for a huge company owned by his uncle Conrad.  He works in Research and Development.  He’s working on a project for his uncle that is so secretive that he can’t tell his co-worker/fiancee, Corinna.  Evan is working on translating Romanian books and parchments.  The project is so secretive that he doesn’t even know why he’s doing it.  Evan is about to find out, though.  His uncle has summoned him.  He boards a private jet with his uncle, along with two other business associates.  They’re headed to Romania.  This isn’t good.  He’s going to miss out on his dinner plans, yet again, with Corinna.  Once in Romania, the gentlemen board a helicopter and are taken to an excavation site.  Evan and Conrad go underground to where the team has uncovered a tomb.  Alone in the tomb is a full skeleton encased in honey.  The skull has fangs.  Yes, it is Dracula.  Evan has just been told that he’s going to resurrect him…. (Cue music!  Dun!  Dun!  DUUUUN!)

This issue was kind of boring.  I’m not going to say that it totally sucked, but it sure wasn’t what I expected.  But then again, when it comes to vampire comics, I have been spoiled with Vertigo’s American Vampire.  Aside from the morbid depictions of the kind of man Vlad III was, there was no action in it.  There’s going to be something happening in this book, I can feel it in my bones.  However, I don’t expect to see it until maybe the third issue.  Is that a bad thing?  I don’t know.  I’ll find out when I get there, but I bet we get to see Vlad run around next issue, in the olden days vamping it up.  It’s got Kurt Busiek’s name on it, so I’m keeping the faith that this series isn’t going to be lame.  The art is nothing fancy or artsy fartsy, it is kind of standard.  It looks like a comic book.  A lot of the times, that is my favorite kind of art.  You don’t have to be experimental or groundbreaking to impress me.

Until next issue, I’m going to go try to figure out how to encase things in honey.  See you back here for next issue.

Aron White
aron@comicattack.net