As the first year of I, Vampire comes to a close, so does Andrew Bennett’s battle with the Zombie Vampire Vampire Hunters. Yes, this book has Zombie Vampire Vampire Hunters. Anyway, Stormwatch joins in to help save the day and things are never going to be the same for Andrew or any of the vampires of the DC Universe.

Read on for my review!

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The past several issues of this series have all been extremely quick reads, full of lots of awesome action, but this twelfth issue proves to be much more substantial, both in terms of dialogue and the amount of plot that’s introduced and used throughout. Plus, we still get a full issue of Sorrentino’s artwork, which is always awesome.

As shown on the cover, Midnighter, Apollo, and Jack Hawksmoor of Stormwatch show up to stop the supernatural war that’s been happening over the past few issues. Fialkov does a much better job with these characters in just a few issues than Paul Cornell did in the few issues of Stormwatch that I read, and that, combined with the way that Andrea Sorrentino handles the characters visually, just makes me wish this team would take over that title. 

I’ve read in interviews that, with this issue, Fialkov plans on changing the focus of I, Vampire, moving away from Andrew Bennett as he believes the character has gone as far as he can narratively. That said, I was definitely expecting a huge ending here that’s pretty conclusive for Andrew. We get that to an extent, but it seems to me that there will still be great focus on Andrew for at least a few more issues before moving completely to its new focus. Regardless, the ending of this issue introduces a really interesting new status quo that’s sure to mix things up and offer a good jumping on point for curious new readers. 

I remain astonished by Sorrentino’s artwork, as any other artist of his caliber would have taken at least one or two issues of break by this point. As I mentioned, his renditions of the members of Stormwatch stand out here as an exceptional interpretation, and he illustrates several beautiful scenes involving Andrew himself as well as Apollo. 

Fans of I, Vampire have another great issue this month, and it seems like we’ll be having a lot more great stuff to look forward to as long as sales are strong enough to keep the title from being canned by DC editorial. Given what Fialkov has introduced here I’m hopeful we see the title stick around for a good while.

GO Rating: 4/5

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