As a devoted Stephen King fan, I was happy to stumble upon the Comixology app for my iPad recently, where there was a sale on the first volume of American Vampire books. American Vampire is in fact made up of two stories -- one that takes place in the 1920s in Los Angeles (written by Snyder and illustrated by Albuquereque), and the other in the Old West (written by King and illustrated by Albuquereque) -- with one common character, Skinner Sweet.
Snyder's story is that of Pearl, a young woman in LA trying to be an actress but barely making ends meet. She meets a nice man named Henry and is invited to a Hollywood party...which isn't what it seems. At the party she is brutally attacked by a group of ancient, European vampires and left for dead in the desert covered in blood and bite marks. When she wakes up she finds herself with a man she recognizes -- Skinner Sweet. He tells her that she is now a vampire, but not the kind that attacked her last night. She's a new kind of vampire...more powerful than the old Europeans can imagine.
King's story also tells the tale of Skinner Sweet in the late 1800s. Sweet is an old west outlaw who has a run in with a vampire (one of the very same who attack Pearl) in the desert. Sweet is buried and drowned and yet he still survives -- stronger and more evolved than any vampire before him.
Although I'm a life-long King fan, I preferred the story from Scott Snyder -- Pearl's struggle with what she had become was the real page turner for me.
The books are beautifully drawn and look great on the iPad -- I'm sure I'll be buying additional volumes in the future.
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