VMT – review

Author & Illustrator: William Simpson

First Published: 2022

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Vampires come in many forms and curious identities, full of diverse methodologies, not all Nosferatu of the rat teeth, or Dracula and his penchant for impaling Turks, but one thing's for sure, they aren't meant to sparkle or be teenage friendly, even if the young do taste like chicken! It's not that vampires aren't fun, but hang on to your face, they peel easier than an apple in baking season.

VMT brings together three diverse vampiric existences in an encounter with a darker, more malevolent evil, insistent on shredding the veil of life and indulging in a brutal orgy of carnal sacrifice... but of course, you have to get the flies out of the ointment first.

If this was just SUN's story, Cyndi Lauper's 'Girls just wanna have fun' would be ringing through one's head, but it would be a short lived vainglorious effort, as her vampire nature means serious bloodletting and much pain for her encountered victims... still, she may be a bad tempered attitude on legs, but not the creeping pervading evil that fate must decree is destiny. No matter how they try, lives are not lived alone and with vampires, never a single timeline.

Past and potential futures, conjure the present and 'Sun's present will be filled with 'Mercy', a much older vampire and a victim of her own religion dominated quest for release, though blood addiction conspires to hold her on a razor edge of desperation and anger for her birth.

And then, 'Death's Dark Angel' walks the path between the shades of life and oblivion, manipulating the ripples of time and space, lured by maelstroms of brutality and horror, her feet steeped in histories long forgotten and her self, soaring beyond moral obligations.

VMT series one: An invitation into a meeting of a tryptic of cursed vampiric existence, surrounded by a consortium of very human fearful companions... and the battle against something much worse in dubious demonic devilry and such things as go bump in the night.

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The review: The edition of VMT I have just gives it that title, though according to Amazon it stands for Vampire Menstrual Tension and is a new series by comic book/graphic novelist William Simpson. Simpson was part of the team behind DC’s Vamps (I will look at that here at some point), which is a graphic series about motorbike riding bad-ass vampire women and to some degree this treads similar ground (one of the characters, Artemis, is a motorcycle riding vampire hunter). The blurb tells us about the main vampire characters and they are all very different. The very young Sun is rage filled (and, though she doesn’t know it, has a bad habit of leaving her victims to rise as zombies), Mercy hates the clergy and seeks redemption, seeing Sun as a route to do so, and Sheherazade (named 'Death's Dark Angel' in the blurb) is ancient, named as a Goddess and almost aloof to the world; she also appears to be a soul eater.

Thrown into the mix is a vampiric Marquis de Sade and his vampire henchman Monderain, who have been sacrificing prostitutes to bring about a Lovecraftian apocalypse – so we get a cosmic horror aspect – and a homicide cop, Jake, who is out of his depth.

The artwork is gorgeous, there is action, violence and horror but not a lot of backstory and so it can feel a tad empty in places, plenty of style but missing some of the substance. That said we do have the three very different vampires and that brings me to something Simpson puts as part of the introduction, “I don’t get nice sparkly vampires with werewolf puppies as their pets”. Ok, I get it – and I don’t mind backlash creating an ultraviolent, adult piece of art. However, let it go already.

This is worthwhile, especially if you like your vampires violent (and in the case of de Sade, thoroughly evil) and more so if you like cosmic horror in your vampire stories. As mentioned, it could have stood some more backstory (which may come into future volumes as this is meant to be the first of three) but it’s still worth your time and still a quality piece of graphic novelisation. Thanks to Leila for putting me on to this and Sarah for getting it me as a birthday present. 7.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK