I, Vampire – Volume 1: Tainted Love – review

Writer: Joshua Hale Fialkov

Artist: Andrea Sorrentino

First Published: 2012 (Trade Paperback)

Contains spoilers

The blurb: The War of the Vampires begins.

For hundreds of years, vampire Andrew Bennett kept mankind safe from the horrors of the supernatural world, thanks to a truce he made with his ex-lover Mary, the Queen of Blood. But now the truce has reached a bloody end and Andrew must do everything in his power to stop Mary and her dark forces from wreaking havoc on an unwitting human population.

Soon enough, across the country, bodies litter the streets as the fiending vampiresse (SIC) builds her army. A weakened Andrew must seek the aid of unusual allies – John Constantine, Hellblazer, as well as The Dark Knight himself – to take down the bloodthirsty Mary. But can he really trust them… and does he truly believe he has the power to stop the Queen of Blood?

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The review: I, Vampire was a DC series that ran from 1981 to 1983. This is the first volume in the late 2011 DC reboot called “The New 52!” The series will run through three trade paperbacks.

In this the main (good) vampire character, Andrew Bennett, is some 600 years old but appears to be in his twenties. The cover – by artist Jenny Frison – gave a bit of a false impression of the artwork inside; indeed there is a blocky feeling, almost Banksy-like, to Sorrentino’s art that fits the subject matter much better than the too clean overtly modern cover.

Bennett is trying to stop Mary, Queen of Blood, his former lover and fledgling who wants to rule the world with a vampiric army. En route he gets help from Professor John Troughton, vampire hunter, and Tig, a young girl whose father was taken by vampires. He also comes across DC staples John Constantine and Batman.

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The vampires, depending on age, can transform into mist, bats and wolves (and wolfman) forms. If their sire is killed within 72 hours of being turned victims can be made human. The sun takes away the vampires powers – Constantine makes a mystical false sun that does the same to a young vampire but fails to affect Bennett. If a vampire reaches 300 years then the only thing that will kill it is for the vampire to willingly die or for its sire to willingly die first.

The story is a little simplistic. A vampire who struggles with his curse fights a vampire who does not (and wishes for world domination). We get some characterisation of these main two though it could have been deeper and, despite the pretty boy vampire cover, we get a disdain of the more modern vampire form when Constantine suggests that he hates “sissy-boy vampires”. Despite their powers Batman has a desire to take the vampires in to face justice (and I understand Justice League Dark come into the second volume).

All in all a nice start to the series. 7 out of 10.