Issue #1 of American Vampire was published a couple weeks back. It’s a new ongoing series from Vertigo, and the first issue features the first installments of two complete stories. The first story, by series creator Scott Snyder, is set in the 1920s and it features a pair of aspiring Hollywood actresses who want to break their way into the studio system. It’s okay; Nothing surprising happens, and the the resolution to this issue’s cliffhanger is so obvious that it kills my desire to pick up the second issue. The art is gritty but accessible; it does the job and doesn’t distract from the story.
The second story, written by Stephen King, is the real reason to read the issue. It’s set in the old west, and it’s the opening chapter of a story about a train robbery of sorts. King hasn’t written very much by way of comics in the past (the Marvel Comics adaptations of The Stand don’t count—those are written by other people), but his comics writing eliminates many of the problems I have with his self-indulgent prose—all that’s left on the page is the plot and the dialogue. (King writes some famously awful clunkers, but on the whole I’d rank his dialogue way above most other best-selling potboiler writers like Grisham or Dan Brown.) There’s more weirdness, more hinting at a greater plot, in King’s story than in Snyder’s, and it basically steals the show. Since King is guest-writing American Vampire and Snyder is supposed to be the star attraction, that makes me nervous about the prospects for the future of this comic. I’ll stick it out for the King story—hopefully Snyder’s story will pick up enough uniqueness in the next six issues to make it worth my time as a reader.
I avoid every book, movie, app, comic book, etc. with “American” in the title. Lesson be learned to you all.