Sunday, October 04, 2015

V-Wars volume 2: All of us Monsters – review

Writer: Jonathan Maberry

Artists: Marco Turini & Alan Robinson

First Published: 2015

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Big Dog and V-8 are the top gunslingers in the escalating battle with vampire terrorists. But the hunt for a new and intensely brutal species of bloodsucker puts them in the crosshairs of the world's most dangerous special operative: Joe Ledger. And, the members of V-8 are tasked to hunt down and obtain plans for a stolen vampire gene screener. Collects issues #6-11

The review: After reading V-Wars volume 1 I was left with a sense that I really liked the graphic but it didn’t quite meet the level of the prose. However, with this volume I felt the game lifted, it fell into its own pattern comfortably. The first half of the graphic follows the special unit V-8 as they hunt a nelapsi - but all is not what it seems and they fall into the murky world of black ops and meet Joe Ledger (crossing over from Maberry’s popular Ledger series). The second part sees two members of V-8 following technology into Paris, but the two soldiers have some very real inner demons to battle, meanwhile folklorist Luther Swann makes a stand (helped by George Clooney) and tries to publically broker a peace between beats and bloods.

The stories worked well, the art complemented it and the real world character appearances were welcome as they offered an interesting undercurrent. The focus was much more on the shadowy governmental underbelly – with Agencies on all sides trying to get their hands on rare vampire types and technology. Blind obedience to a cause is questioned within the narrative.

All in all great stuff and the more I see of V-Wars the more I’m convinced it would make either great TV or even films. 8 out of 10.

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