American Vampire #3

Chapter Three:  "Rough Cut" and "Blood Vengeance"
written by Scott Snyder and Stephen King
art by Rafael Albuquerque

How can a vampire who retains its human memories and emotions also transform into a calculating, brutal killer?  It's a difficult line that Snyder walks to perfection in Pearl.  Skinner Sweet, however charismatic a character, was always an outlaw who unflinchingly murdered his enemy's lover, fed on an entire town of strangers, and shows no remorse for collateral carnage.  Pearl was not.  Her new strength and predatory acumen exists alongside her sisterly love for her roommate and her burgeoning romance with Henry.  Yet, she shows no hesitation in getting her revenge:  slaughtering the self-promoting movie star who lured her into the vampires' lounge, ripping the face off one of her attackers, and skewering another on cactus thorns.  That she is more discriminating than Sweet in selecting her targets doesn't make her any less intuitive about her kills, and it's precisely this that gives her transformation such credibility.

"Blood Vengeance" continues Sweet's story as told by Bunting, his personal feud with Jim Book in the years following his re-emergence.  However, it is his untold history with the European vampires, alluded to in "Rough Cut," that is intriguing in its suggestiveness.  Having once eluded assassination by the Europeans in America—indeed, having decapitated the lot—Sweet seemed to have come to some tentative agreement, the "Treaty," which seems to be on somewhat tenuous ground and on the verge of being broken at any moment.  The meeting of the vampires early in the issue also alludes to "the Vassals," presumably another rival vampire organization.

[July 2010]

As collected in American Vampire, Volume 1 (ISBN 978-1401228309)