Review: I, Vampire Vol. 2- Rise of the Vampires

February 8, 2018 ComicBookWire

Quick Summary

Pros: The main storyline is interesting and full of action. The book’s humor is done well and allows for some hilarious meta commentary. The book looks beautiful and perfectly matches the story’s tone.

Cons: Some of the story arcs end too abruptly.

Overall: Vampires are back and better than ever. This book takes all of the craziness of the first volume and turns it up to eleven while managing to avoid sacrifices in quality. There are awesome fight sequences, plenty of twist and turns, and even some comedy here and there. If you are looking for a book with plenty of action that still finds time to tell a few jokes, this collection is for you.

Story

I, Vampire Vol. 2: Rise of the Vampires is a ridiculous and wild read that completely acknowledges and embraces its own craziness. Joshua Hale Fialkov takes readers on a nonstop thrill ride that takes every cool aspect of vampirism and mixes it together; this is a book where vampires, vampire hunters, demons, and prehistoric evils are all fighting each other. Throw in a dash of comedy and some entertaining cameos from other books and you have a pretty solid collection of stories.

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The first half of this book is a crossover with the Justice League Dark series dealing with the immediate fallout from Andrew’s death and Cain’s awakening. Here the Justice League Dark, vigilantes from Gotham, and the cast from the I, Vampire series are all forced to team up and kill as many vampires as possible in the most epic ways possible. It is an entertaining crossover and one that does not disappoint when it comes to fight sequences. In the end, the combined efforts of both parties pay off and Cain is defeated, leaving Andrew as the new leader of the vampire horde. This allows the already good book to begin an even better and more interesting plotline.

This portion of the story is not just agonizing over life though, it also features the most bombastic portion of the entire collection. When the Order of the Van Helsings, a vampire hunting organization, hears about Andrew’s clan of vampires, they decide to wage a war. They storm the area equipped with amulets that turn them into zombies and begin turning the vampires into zombies as well. This results in Andrew and Mary facing off against an army of vampire-zombie vampire hunters, which is as ridiculous and crazy as it sounds. This whole portion of the book is just fun action that any reader can sit back and enjoy.

Although all of this action and suspense is thrilling, it is the collection’s use of humor and satire that make it truly unique. Rise of the Vampires embraces elements that other stories would dismiss as being too ridiculous and pokes fun at elements that other stories would take too seriously. For example, in many other comics, two heroes will meet and instantly begin to fight each other, with each believing that the other is a villain. In I, Vampire, two heroes decide to “skip over the pointless fight” after quickly realizing they are on the same team. Jokes like these keep an otherwise dark book a bit more lighthearted and fun and allow the series to get away with some situations that simply wouldn’t fly in other books.

My only major gripe with this collection, as a whole, is the use of deus ex machina style endings. Both the fight with Cain and the fight against the Helsings are instantly won when Andrew shows up and uses his magic against them. The road to these endings is fun but Andrew’s magic causes such a sudden turn of events that I felt a pang of disappointment rather than satisfaction. It does not completely ruin these endings, but certainly keeps them from being as good as they could be.

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Art

Once again, Andrea Sorrentino absolutely kills it when it comes to artwork. His dark style and minimalist lines perfectly compliment the subject matter being portrayed in this story. In particular, his two-page spreads look fantastic and significantly contribute to whatever portion of the book they are found. This is a book that says as much through the artwork as it does through the dialogue.

Unfortunately, the Justice League Dark issues of this collection do not look quite as good as the I, Vampire ones. These are not bad looking issues, in fact Admira Wijaya and Daniel Sampere do an admirable job in depicting the dark and mysterious world these characters inhabit; they just do not look as good as the rest of the collection. In particular, smaller panels with less detailed artwork can look strange at times and distract from the rest of the work. With only two chapters of this artwork though, it does not have a large impact on the collection as a whole.