Comic Review: Blood-Stained Teeth #1 (Image Comics)

It’s vampires all around the place, and it’s Image Comics’ first issue of Blood Stained Teeth. Can this new title puncture the jaded reader’s skin, or merely get under our skin?

Writer Christian Ward, an Eisner Award winner, provokes us from the start, with the idea that there are two types of vampires. The First Born are rich and powerful, and the elite. Then there are the people who have been bitten by the First Born. These ’turned’ are called ’Sips’, and are vicious, unsatisfied killers. This, then, is Ward’s story of the two.

Meet Atticus Sloane, vampire for hire. He’s urbane, suave, debonaire. Sort of like a David Bowie with a slight moustache. He’s a bit of a $#%@ disturber too. And that’s where the trouble starts.

He’s unimpressed with the young, the shallow influencers who pay to be bitten and then post selfies about it. How gauche! Time to break some rules.

Patric Reynolds draws the urban vampire life with deep shadows being cast by realistically rendered figures and environments. We see the fangs, the thankless violence, the hostility and tension. It’s up close and in your face. Wonderful art. Colourist Heather Moore really pulls out all the stops too, with an overall application of bright, primary colours. There are brilliant cadmium yellows, cyan blues, fuschias and cadmium reds. It’s intense and a real blast to the eye, this amped-up palette, injecting such visual excitement into the night scenes. Oh, and I need to point out the unique and thoughtfully applied lettering by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou! The dialogue boxes, descriptions, captions, signage. Otsmane-Elhaou’s work is so high-end, so smoothly done, so seamless.

However, the story drama hinges on Atticus, our principle undead dancer, our biter of necks, our urbane, disinterested First Born. And he is ruffling the feathers of other First Born, leading to him being pursued. And that’s where the disinterest begins for the reader. You see, we are already distant from this vampire. He’s a jerk. We have nothing invested in him, he’s so superior, smug, and unlikeable. So when he lands in hot water, and the reader is supposed to ‘care’, we actually don’t.

And that’s the fly in the ointment here, the main character being disliked. We don’t really mind if he suffers the stings and pricks of outrageous misfortune. And that’s unfortunate, and it bites.

Image Comics, Blood Stained Teeth #1, $3.99 for 24 pages of content. Horror.