By Dustin Cabeal
There’s a lot of vampire books coming out from Image Comics lately. Maybe I’ll like one of them in the future, but Blood Stained Teeth which is a grammar error that I cannot unsee or correct, is not the vampire book for me.
The entire first issue is used to create a situation for the main character to be forced to go through with the plot of the comic. Which does not make it a particularly strong first issue. Especially since it reveals its emotional lynch pin within its pages. You might be wondering to what I’m referring. It’s the plot device that’s been set up with a timer waiting to go off and emotionally manipulated the audience. It’s vampire Pixar moment and it could very well work. Emotional bombs are successful based on the amount of fuse given to them, so if Christian Ward writes a slow burn, it may be successful regardless of the rest of the story.
I didn’t hate this issue, but it’s high concept vampires. First born vampires running the planet. The other 99% being created by rogue first borns. Enter Atticus Sloane a vampire that will turn you for money. It’s not established why he needs money or why he really does this, but it’s caught up to him. He’s turned too many people and now an Influencer out hash tagging fang life. Sloane is tasked with killing all the vampires he’s created including the emotional lynch pin to the story.
The artwork is detailed, but photo referenced leaving it feeling stiff. Atticus is the coolest vampire in the world by default. We only meet three other vampires, and one is Bram Stoker, and the other is a dude named Mr. Tooth. He has one fucking tooth in case you were wondering. It’s strange because sometimes the coloring hurts the artwork and other times it’s the only reason to look at it. The color palette is all over the place, clashing and fighting against itself, but ends up creating some beautiful pages. It just feels a bit too stiff though.
There is not a lot to say about this first issue. It’s straightforward in what it does. The weakness here are well hidden, but in the end, this is an epilogue to the real story that will begin with the second issue. Everything here is crafted to set up that story, but is it really needed? Was this the best choice for the first issue or could the details of this issue be strung throughout the coming issues as a way to slowly develop Atticus’ motivation as we see him tearfully destroy the vampires he created. Seeing him delve further into madness as he breaks his creations one by one and grows as a character until he gets to that one creation he can’t break. A parallel could have been used of all the human things he’s collected and has as he thinks about his first pressing of his David Bowie album as he’s killing David Bowie and seeing the piece of shit he was and the humanized vampire he’s become.
Maybe that will happen. Not the David Bowie part because they rename him Alex Starr, but the emotional development of Atticus and perhaps his true motivation for creating so many vampires. As it stands, I don’t understand his motivation. I know the task assigned to him, but we’ll all need to wait and see if the story can provide the answer to why we care about Atticus’ journey. As it stands, we know what he’s doing and how he’s going to do it, but without the why this story will fall short of being great.
Christian Ward
Patric Reynolds
Heather Moore
Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Heather Antos