Comic Review: Angel Vol. 1 Being Human (BOOM! Studios)

BOOM! Comics releases a graphic novel adaptation of an American spin-off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer series in the late 90s which is Angel: Being Human on its first volume.

So this series, I’ve never heard of it, but it involves supernatural situations like vampires and such. And to be honest, this whole series is another version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I don’t know about the series because I was 6 years at that time. But never in my entire life would I ever come across a comic adaptation such as this. The story is originally created by Joss Whedon, but this comic is written by Bryan Edward Hill and illustrated by Gleb Melnikov. Bryan is an American author, also a comic book writer who was hired by Top Cow Production to expand the Witchblade universe by writing the trade paperback of Broken Trinity: Pandora’s Box with Rob Levin.

The front cover shows a distant cover art of the main character standing insight of the city. However, the whole background is dark, there are lights out there, even the cross. What I do like about this cover is that the artist decided to pour the dripping ink on the downside of the cover as if it’s bleeding in black. So the only thing we could tell the story is that there are vampires in the 20^th century, however, there are some demons that a spreading around the city at night. The story starts with the main character named Angel, and despite him being human, he actually drinks blood from the fridge as if he’s picking his Gatorade after a workout. However when he invited that girl for the hunt, and while they fought against a demon, he devoured her for being careless. His whole story takes back to a long time and he still lives for a few centuries. That is to say in the present, Angel is like Batman when he goes to a hunt every night, and in the past few centuries, he’s like Dracula who continuously punishing humans and cursed god forevermore. However, there’s more to the series than meets the eye because the newer version takes place in the 21^st century right now because smartphones still exist in this era. I can’t tell the details of this story, but I’m only giving you the short version of it.

The story is much more like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but there’s a lot of craziness going on over the story because it’s more of a supernatural and dark fiction story. However at the back of the book, claims that he walks in the line between two worlds, which would mean he has a second life as a human and a vampire. However, the society in this city is spawned by many demons who are preying on the innocent. The art is more of DC Comic material, but from what I see this comic is that it’s more of an Image Comic material with all the craziness and violence going on, this would be more similar to the other comic called Dracula’s a motherf**ker. The artist had focused a few details on the comic pages from the characters and the backgrounds. For example, there are one of the pages that take place in Wallachia in the past, the artist had well developed the background where everything is on fire and the characters were in sorrow because of the destruction. And then when you get to the pages that take place in the present, I’d realize the whole background and the characters, that would mean that he changed his style. I don’t know why, but seeing the difference led me to a mystery. What’s his story, I would like to know. So Angel is actually a vampire hunting story that is recreated to have the readers or fans of the show, would see this where it left off.