The Night Projectionist – review

Written by: Robert Heske

Art by: Diego Yapur

First published: 2012 (trade paperback)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: One Final Night of Terror.

It’s Halloween, and a small group of moviegoers attend the final showing of an old movie theatre, not knowing it could be the last thing they ever see! All hell breaks loose whenthe mysterious night projectionist traps the group in the theatre and it quickly becomes surrounded by a horde of vampires. But who is hunting who? Soon a bloody war rages through the theatre with the body count multiplying by the minute.

Don’t miss this no holds barred tale of bloody revenge that puts the bite back into vampire stories.

The review: It seems a long old time since I looked at the first two issues of the comics that have made up this trade paperback, and Kindleversion, indeed three years have passed. I was very impressed with what I saw and was aching to know more of the very unusual lore that the comic introduced.

sample artwork

Finally the wait is over and we return to modern day Massachusetts, and 1709 Hungary, for a story of revenge that stretches the centuries. I mentioned much of the lore in my first impression but want to touch on one of the more unusual aspects. This is the feeding method that sees a parasitic lava infecting a human host, rotting them from the inside as it wraps them in a cocoon. This is associated with head vampire Burak who created his vampirism when, as a sorcerer, he tried to cheat death and experimented with the dead, the blood of the damned, a rare snake and sorcery. The serpent’s bite killed the sorcerer but he came back. As well as the parasitic way of feeding, he has normal fangs and those he turned (including his son-in-law, Dragos, the main protagonist and night projectionist of the title) were bound to serve him (how this spell was broken by Dragos is revealed in comic) and he gains strength when members of his coven feeds. The vampire hearts contain serpent like creatures, which are the parasites – hence the heart must be destroyed to destroy the vampire.

The coven themselves will take wolf form and other powers include dominating the will of humans (having bitten them) and have telekinetic like abilities.

The story itself follows a familiar trope of master and unwilling servant conflict, but the backstory is strong and the story itself robust, this is strengthened further by the excellent artwork. Added with this some rather bloodthirsty vampires and the very unusual lore and we have a winner of a volume. 7.5 out of 10.