Blog

American Vampire #2
Publisher: Vertigo Comics
Writers: Scott Snyder & Stephen King
Art/Cover: Rafael Albuquerque
Variant Cover: Bernie Wrightson
Pages: 40
Price: US $3.99
Release Date: April 21, 2010

***CAUTION: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!***

Los Angeles, 1925.  After being attacked last issue, Pearl Jones is found alive…barely.  She’s staggering, weak, along the road.  Her friends get her to the hospital.  She’s dying.  There’s nothing doctors can do to help her.  Somebody else can, though…enter again, the scruffy lookin’ nerf herder of  a creepy cowboy.  Enter, Skinner Sweet….

Pearl Jones wakes in a room full of stiffs, toe tags, and one cleverly placed Easter egg.  She manages to escape unnoticed and go home.  Say hello to Skinner again, Dolly!  He gives her a run down of what’s going on with her and confirms what she already feels to be so.  He tells her that they are not like the other vampires.  They’re better and the others hate them for it.  Skinner leaves Pearl a note describing a few differences between them and the old vampires (I’m not going to tell you here.  Buy the book!  You WON’T be sorry!).  He also leaves her with a little snack in the closet…Mr. Big Movie Star who invited her to the studio big wig’s party.  The same guy who told her the big wig wanted to see her in his den….

Skinner Sweet.  1850 – 1880.  Poor Skinner met his demise that fateful day his boys intercepted his train ride to the gallows tree.  The fair-skinned sissy boy banker’s colleagues warned him that some of his blood got onto Skinner as he lay dying when the dust settled.  But fair-skinned sissy boy banker, Percy (See?  he even has a sissy name!) (Apologies to those out there named Percy.), is smarter than that.  He made sure Skinner was buried in a pine box, six-feet-deep beneath a big pile of heavy rocks.  That’s not all, though.  Percy has one more thing up his sissy fur coat sleeve.  He’s bought land south of Sidewinder, in New Mexico.  Land he plans to irrigate and build a dam on.  In three years, Skinner Sweet will be under 66 feet of water.  Percy has it all wrong, though.  Skinner is not THAT kind of vampire.  The elements won’t do him in.  Aside form the occasional curious rat for food, Mr. Sweet is just too weak to escape.

1909.  Scavengers decide to go exploring the watery tomb that once was Sidewinder’s Boot Hill….

This highly anticipated second issue is highly amazing!  Each story is huge!  You are definitely getting your money’s worth of reading when you drop your $3.99 down on the counter!  Scott Snyder, Stephen King, and Rafael Albuquerque take us deeper into the origin of a new breed of vampire: the American vampire.  Horror master, Stephen King, continues his pulse-pounding origin of Skinner Sweet.  Scott Snyder, becoming a master of horror in his own right, pulls back more of the covers on what is Pearl Jones.  I have a feeling that once all the covers are pulled away, we are all going to be wishing we were hiding under the bed!  Once again, Rafael Albuquerque has done a spotless job of contrasting the two time settings.  In this issue, he even takes us into a third setting: a dream sequence that is brought to life in beautiful, nightmarish clarity.

I cannot stress it enough.  GET IN ON THIS SERIES!  If your local comic shop still has copies of #1, snatch one!  Snatch two!  Give one to your mom.  I did!  Issue #1 has sold out and has gone back to the printers.  If you can’t find a copy, pick #2 up anyway and tell your dealer that you want your name on a second printing when it comes in.

What are you waiting for?!  Go!  I’ve gotta go find some candy….

Aron White
aron@comicattack.net