Bad Blood #1 Review

By John McCubbin on Wednesday, January 1st, 2014

How good is Dark Horses’ latest vampire series Bad Blood? Read on to find out.

The official description from Dark Horse:

Getting bitten by a vampire pissed him off. Seeing his best friend brutally slaughtered started a war.

Trick was a typical college student—sort of—until vampires attacked. Then he found out his blood was poison to the bloodsuckers. And Trick will do anything to eradicate them.

There have been plenty of vampire stories over the years, and most of them are terrible. This one of the other hand is simply astonishing, and it is the uniqueness of the story that does this, with it being a very gripping tale.

Jonathan Maberry does an amazing job of not just giving us a great mysterious vampire tale, but he also manages to give us a fairly emotional one at that, as the way he opens the story makes you feel sorry for the character as it is, so adding vampires just enhances that tenfold. Maberry also created a new weakness for vampires in this issue as well, as despite there having been similar ways of repelling vampires in the past, there has never been anything quite like this before. On top of all this Maberry added a lot of intensity and suspense to this tale, with the sudden twist in the middle being the stand out point.

The artwork from Tyler Crook complimented Maberry’s writing brilliantly, with Crook’s style being perfect for this kind of series. The detail of Crook’s art throughout was generally very consistent, though the best part of his art had to be his amazing colours, with it adding a lot more intensity to the story. I also loved the way that Crook handled the character emotion throughout the issue as well, and especially at the start, as it added so much depth to the already brilliant tale. Crook also amazed me with some very gory sequences and overall I feel that his art along with Maberry’s scripts will make this a fantastic mini-series.

A brilliant start for this vampire series, with it being one of the most unique additions to the vampire genre. I for one loved this issue and can’t wait for the next and would highly recommend giving it a try.