By Cat Wyatt

Quick heads up: I’m what you call a vampire snob, I love vampire stories, but only when they’re done certain ways. When I spotted Dark Fang, I immediately knew that I was going to have to give it a try, the artwork alone was screaming at me to read it, that couple with the vampiric elements and I was sold.

Our story starts off with ‘Earth Calling Part One, ’ and it does so in a most unexpected manner. The first few images are of a woman that is very clearly a Cam Girl, with the chat on the side of the screen and everything (fun little side note: the Picard facepalming meme snuck its way in here. Love it!). Now you’re probably wondering what this has to do with vampires. At the moment the connection is pretty simple; some dude is walking down the street watching this video on his phone, completely unaware that he’s about to become a vampire snack. Talk about situational awareness.

After finishing her feast, our newly introduced blond vampire (no name yet) finds the phone and is understandably confused. She’s never seen this sort of interaction before, nor does she understand why the woman in the video (not that she knows the term for this) is getting so excited about these strange things called ‘tokens.’ Eventually, she puts two and two together (tokens = income) and figures out that there’s a correlation here; the more tokens this woman gets, the more ‘indecent’ (her words, not mine) she acts. The more ‘indecent’ she acts, the more tokens she gets. And so on until the end of the video stream.

It’s pretty understandable that any vampire (especially ones that can pass as being attractive) would be interested in this as a means of gaining money. It seems easy enough, after all. After all, once you grab a minion or two to help you run the page (preferably without cutting their head off, but clearly our little vampire hasn’t been informed of that) you’ll be off to the races. Her newly beheaded minion is called Tony, in case you were curious, and surprisingly enough he isn’t dead (thanks, vampire blood!).

Our little vampire (as I’m choosing to call her until I get a name) quickly realizes that she doesn’t actually like this whole thing; emoticons are silly, and all the people chatting use ‘broken language’ and the like. Not to mention they’re not actually paying her, the whole point of this ruse to begin with. So instead she unleashes her natural abilities and quickly starts enthralling humans for blood and money instead (this at least is more expected of a vampire). I’ll confess there are some things that she does with her trawls that I don’t approve of – mainly allowing them to stay near her during the daytime. It seems too risky to me, but clearly, she’s unconcerned about her levels of control over them.

Despite her newfound wealth, our little vampire still doesn’t feel content. In fact, the more she gets, the worse she feels. On an impulse she makes one of her minions buy her a mansion – a very specific one: Dracula’s (yes, you read that right). I’m not quite sure how she was hoping this would make her feel better unless she’s looking for a connection with her kind’s past or something like that.

It’s while lounging in her new home that she starts to reveal her past to us. She was embraced one hundred years ago, in a town she no longer remembers the name of (much like her own name, I suspect). The vampire that embraced her had three brides and needed no more; instead, she was to be his slave, cleaning up after their messes. Fortunately for her, they were very stupid captors and proved easy for her to bring down (here’s a hint: if you’re a vampire and want to keep slaves, perhaps don’t give them wooden implements to clean with).

Upon gaining her freedom, our little vampire did something unexpected; she walked into the sea. And the sea is where she lived for the next one hundred years, happily making friends with sharks (no joke) and researching vampires that chose to live on land (a foolish choice, in her mind). It was only a drastic change in the sea (yet to be confirmed what) that forced her back onto land. I believe had this not occurred she probably would have continued to live (er…un-live?) at the bottom of the ocean.

While she found the crowds of people and all the other changes to be overwhelming at first, eventually she found similarities between them and her fish friends (not the most flattering thing I’ve heard all day…). Unfortunately, her comfort led her into a spiral of indulging her vices, nearly losing herself to them. Until Tony (the minion mentioned earlier) points out an alarming change in herself (I’m sure based on the title you can guess what that change is). Presumably, she’ll now be forced to look into whatever it was that corrupted the ocean since it seems logical that she’s being affected by the same force. But that’s just a guess on my part.

I love how much work Miles Gunter put into this; they managed to create a vampire story that is unique while staying true to vampire lore. This is a very hard to find balance, but they nailed it. Adding in the humor and absurdity of the intro and you can tell they know how to balance the heavier moments with more humorous ones. I’m sure this will be especially important for later issues. I appreciate that they were unafraid to show the character’s sexuality, while also not making it all about that.

I can’t get over what a wonderful job the artists did with this issue. The cover is stunning – as I stated above, it’s literally the reason I wanted to read it (though thankfully the rest of it held up). The color palette is stunning – both for the cover and for the series on the whole (though I may be biased here, I love shades of blue and green on covers). The facial expressions can be humorous at times but in a good way. They’re intentionally exaggerated to prove a point, though sometimes they are lacking in detail (mostly when it isn’t a close-up). I noticed there were several interesting angles or perspectives used throughout; for example, one scene was shown through the reflection of a suit of armor (I’m assuming this was intentionally ironic and based on vampire tropes).

Score: 5/5

Dark Fang #1
Publisher: Image Comics