Carmilla Volume 2: The Last Vampire Hunter – review

Author: Amy Chu

Illustrations: Soo Lee

First published: 2024

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Before Dracula, before Nosferatu, there was...CARMILLA.

In the second volume of this feminist tale of murder, monsters, and mystery layered with dark Chinese folklore, social worker turned vampire hunter Athena Lo has just lost everyone she loves—and it's all her fault.

Hoping to put her life back together, Athena travels to San Francisco’s Chinatown on a quest to uncover the secrets of her mysterious family history. But her journey escalates into a nightmare when she‘s violently introduced to a new, ruthless gang of Asian American vampires and its unlikely leader, who hold shocking truths. As she navigates this dangerous territory, Athena can't escape the ghost of Carmilla...and neither can the vampires. Athena must decide—whose side is she on?

Inspired by the gothic novel that started the vampire genre, this queer, feminist murder mystery graphic novel is a tale of identity, obsession and fateful family secrets.

The review: It would have been easy for this sequel to Carmilla: The First Vampire to have ignored the titular vampire as vampire hunter Athena Lo destroys her in the first volume – but, as we know, you can’t keep a good vampire down. Though, her presence in the book is fleeting (and she seems to have taken the form of a monk). Primarily it follows Athena to San Francisco, where she hopes to piece together her family history.

There she discovers a whole bunch of Asian vampires (and a werewolf), we get Nukekubi (a Japanese Yokai that the book identifies as a Filippino vampire), the Indian Brahmarakshaa (a type of rakshasa), Korean Dokkeabi Goblin (which I have not seen connected with vampirism before) and the Japanese Nure-Omna (another Yokai). Without identifying it, we see a penanggalan and Taki who is a Geungshi (which is the Korean variant spelling of Jiangshi or Kyonsi). The leader is Wing, a young boy who had been attacked by a vampire and was saved by Taki – causing Wing to become a hybrid of western vampire and Jiangshi – Wing happens to be Athena’s older brother though she doesn’t remember him. He tells her of their parents, and their deaths, the Jiangshi hunter heritage and that a Taoist priest had taken her and protected her – the man she knew as her grandfather Yeh Yeh. Unfortunately, Wing has plans for Athena.

Of course, the first volume used Athena’s queerness and Asian identity as lenses for othering. This volume concentrates on the American historic, and more modern, treatment of Asians, and the Chinese specifically through Taki. The redemptive element around him was really rather well done and moving. The story is neat, the appearance of Carmilla fleeting but it was a good, solid little volume. 7 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Vamp or Not? Takeshita Demons

Takeshita Demons is a 2010 children’s book by Cristy Burne that focuses on Miku Takeshita, a young girl whose family have moved to England from Japan. Before she died, her grandmother taught Miku much about Japanese folklore and the girl is fully aware of the Yokai – the monsters and demons the crowd Japanese mythology.

Miku puts a cedar leaf over the door to their home as an apotropaic, but her mother cleans it up and this gives various Yokai opportunity to enter their lives. Now the reason I have looked at this is because the main demon in the book is a nukekubi and Miku (whose voice the book is written in) describes it thusly, “By day they seemed like ordinary people, except for the red symbols around their neck. Those symbols were like the teeth of a zipper: they marked the place where the nukekubi’s head would come flying off. As soon as it was dark, when the body was safely hidden away the nukekubi would go hunting.” We further hear that it could attack all sorts of ages and species but human children where its favourite and that it attacked by biting the neck.

This was interesting as it brought to mind the penanggalan and, indeed, the nukekubi Wikipedia page references Asian vampire types such as the penanggalan and krasue in the 'see also' section. The fact that it went for the neck was similar to the western (whole bodied) vampire, plus it hunted at night but if you hid or destroyed the body so the head could not return by dawn you would destroy the demon – bringing in a night and day cycle.

This nukekubi specifically wants to drink Miku’s blood as the Takeshita women have powers and, by drinking the blood, it wants to steal them – giving a specific blood drinking reference but, to be fair, generally the creature is a flesh eater.

However, it is very close to other Asian vampire variants and thus, to me, falls under the vampire umberella.