By Dustin Cabeal

The concept of eternal children playing capture the flag and tag like the lost boys from Peter Pan is short-lived in this first issue of Little Monsters. It shouldn’t take more than the cover and a few lines of dialogue to figure out that our band of children are all vampires. And though some of them were growing bored of playing childish games, that concept of an empty city inhabited by children playing childish games for hours on end was more intriguing that the rest of the issue.

That’s not to say that what Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen do with the story is un-interesting, but at least in this first issue it all feels safe and easily digestible. For most that’s probably just seen as a successful first issue. Lemire uses the first issue to introduce the kids, eight in total making for a quite a bit of work for a writer to get a reader to care about the characters. There are three standout characters, but as a whole the characters are archetypes waiting to be developed. As they should be, if you came out with a first issue and full developed characters, why would anyone read any further? While the ensemble all has their own quirks and checkboxes, they all seem to have at least one overlapping personality trait… bored immortality.

We meet Romie first, which is a strange choice considering he never speaks and is on the hunt for art supplies. It’s mentioned that it’s been 100 years since I imagine the fall of humanity, but it could be less than that. Perhaps immortal children are still like actual children and have difficulty grasping the concept of time. If it has been a hundred years… I doubt the Sharpie that’s found is any good. From there it’s on to Yui, the reader, Lucas the musician, Ronnie and Raymond the bowl cut twins, Billy the most bored immortal of the group, Bats the stickler for rules type and Vickie, who obviously likes Billy. Sunrise comes and Romie is unaccounted for, Billy offers to retrieve him and then boom last page cliffhanger. I’m not particularly a fan of this cliffhanger due to what it means to the story. As I said, the setup was already interesting and I think there was plenty to explore in the story with that immortal boredom, especially when the characters are children, but obviously comic readers are quick to dip after first issues and the introduction of a major catalyst is better for continued readership.

At the same time this is a book by two of the most popular comic creators in the industry. If anyone could have commanded the patience of an audience, I think it’s Jeff Lemire. This wouldn’t be his first story to have a slow burn to it, but then I don’t know what he has planned for the story, frankly kid vampires aren’t particularly interesting enough to bring me back for a second issue, though I’m sure others that enjoyed the cliffhanger will be chomping at the bit to read more. There in lies the rub, as talented and well presented as this issue is, it just wasn’t interesting enough. It was safe, but not fun.

On a strange side note, why the hell would you have so many characters with similar names? I get the twins, but this book has Ronnie, Raymond and Romie. I was convinced that I had a typo and re-read the introduction to make sure I didn’t mess up or confuse characters.

As for the artwork, Nguyen is consistently fantastic. The linework and digital inking are top shelf material from beginning to end. The kids look like children rather than shrunken illustrations of adults like they so often look like in comics. The detail to their clothing is immaculate, to say they’re well warn doesn’t begin to cover it. They’re mended and patched poorly over and over giving a true sense of children being on their own. You almost feel sorry for them until you see them drinking the blood of rats.

That is not to say that the artwork is perfect. Haunting every few pages is this terrible red moon that’s out of place both in design and color. The creators decided to leave the book uncolored except for blood, Romie’s wall art and certain red objects. The moon is just terrible. It looks like a 3-D model dropped on the page and copied over to other pages. While the story works in black and white, it feels as if it would work better colored. It doesn’t come across as being illustrated with black and white in mind, but rather after all the greyscale was done, they liked it enough to leave it. I think if it wasn’t for the moon, I wouldn’t have even noticed it as much but then I really started staring at the pages and realized that was screaming to be colored like the cover.

This book is an easy buy if say you like vampires, or you’re a fan of either creator. If you’re looking for some clue as to what’s different about this vampire story other than kids and some vague mention of a leader returning, then you’ll be left without an answer. There really isn’t anything wonderful about the overall story and art. Elements of it are great, on their own, but as a whole its not gripping or full of wonder. Removing my desire for the book to do what I wanted and accepting what it did present, I still never found myself wanting to read more. The characters aren’t particularly likeable or interesting enough to be attached to for further issues and yet they’re the driving force of the entire story. Maybe in six issues I’ll eat my hat but there’s a strong chance I won’t make it that far with Little Monsters.

 Jeff Lemire
Dustin Nguyen
Steve Wands
Greg Lockard
Image Comics

Score: 3/5