Released on November 27th, 2019
This book got some buzz when it was released last year. On the back of the book there are favorable quotes by Brian K. Vaughan, Jordan Peele, and Chris Rock. I think the reason Chris Rock is giving this book a quote is because the writer, Rodney Barnes, used to write for Everybody Hates Chris, which was a show about Chris Rock as a kid (I think...I never watched it). Or maybe Chris Rock really loved it, who knows? Either way this book is simply another vampire book. The fresh take is that the vampires are black, inner-city folk in Philly. In one scene, the main character enters a housing project and finds a bunch of vampires hanging from the ceiling in a scene reminiscent of that great scene in Lost Boys. The plot starts with the main character's father, who was a Philly cop, dying. We learn that the father had uncovered that vampires exist and they trace all the way back to the late 1700's when John Adams brought back a case of yellow fever from the Caribbean. Except it wasn't yellow fever...it was vampirism! That's probably not a word. The big cliffhanger is that at the end we find out that the father isn't dead, he's just a (you guessed it!) vampire. While the story is kind of interesting and somewhat creepy, it's also confusing as hell because half of the book is told in flashbacks and half is happening currently and often it's hard to tell which is which. The art, by Jason Shawn Alexander, who most recently has been drawing Spawn, at least gives the book a dark, foreboding, Gothic feel. While this is just another vampire tale, at least it's trying to be a bit more realistic and serious instead of just some comic book action vehicle like Blade. But like any vampire tale, where else is there to go? Staking bloodsuckers is pretty much all there is, right? For this book to succeed, it's going to have to try a little bit harder than your usual Dracula yarn, and so far it has the possibility to be going in the right direction. **1/2
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