Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: american vampire, Comics, entertainment, Rafael Albuquerque, scott snyder, vertigo

American Vampire #6 & #7 Go Viral

"Please don't turn our heroes into villains" said no one ever, or at least not recently. This seems to be the current age of treachery, transformation, and even a hero's own fear of becoming something they don't want to be. And who is becoming more known for that exploration than Scott Snyder? That's not all he writes about, to be sure, but Batman's journey in Death of the Family is perhaps the biggest example in recent comics of a major hero afraid of becoming what he fears the most. Then we have the very successful horror comic Wytches, also written by Snyder, where it looks like Charlie Rooks is going to have to become increasingly monstrous to stand a chance at defeating monsters and save his daughter. But to my surprise, it's actually been in the pages of American Vampire's Second Cycle, written by Snyder and illustrated painstakingly in painterly style by Rafael Albuquerque, that I find the biggest example of this theme in the past couple of issues.

Skinner and Pearl have been the magnetic forces holding the series together as it entered its Second Cycle, and are the most significant characters for reader-identification. American Vampire, which made its name as an influential series through its confident handling of historical material (due in no small part to Albuquerque's eye for architecture, clothing, and the all around "look" of different periods and settings) combined with pretty invasive ideas about good and evil, brings an even greater uneasiness to our historical perspective in the Second Cycle, which deals with the 1960's, including race riots, atomic bombs, and the space program. As you can imagine, determining what the word "evil" means in 1965 is more fraught than 1865 under the influence of the Cold War. But Snyder goes way beyond that thematically appropriate material that forms the backdrop to this story arc in Issues #6 and #7 which form the two-part story "Dark Moon".

Issue #6, part one of "Dark Moon", contains one of my favorite spreads in recent issues, or even in recent comics, to be fair:

In it, Snyder and Albuquerque explain the nature of evil, and it's not exactly what we think it is, operationally speaking, at least. Evil is viral. Sure, it starts somewhere, with one central core of darkness. We learn that the agents are trying to track that source, through research over time. But that's not the most important realization–it's that evil spreads virally. Once it gets its grip on the greatest hero ever sent to fight it–Hurin in Ancient Mesopotamia–a terrible tide turns. He's converted to its cause as a protector and becomes the "Gray Trader", a mis-transliteration over time for the original "Great Traitor" and then we're in a kind of strange Gnostic territory of levels of evil. The Gray Trader is a massive threat, for he wants to raise the Great Evil again in material form and "plants" it to do so.

But for the true implications of all this explanation and revelation in Issue #6, we have to wait for Issue #7, which arrived this week in shops. And then we might kick ourselves a little for not seeing it all coming. Pearl and Skinner have encountered the Gray Trader. They've come into the zone of the infection. How could they possibly resist its influence? Skinner, who we've followed across the decades, is in great danger, and only by seeing his example do we really understand: it doesn't take much to be infected by evil. All you have to do is just get that tiny bit too close and have even the most minimal contact. And then? You are part of what could destroy the world. In that instant everything reverses for you and all your friends become your enemies (with some justifiable reasons), and everything you've fought for might just become a totally wasted, or at best ironic, epilogue to your fate.

Congratulations to Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque for plumbing the depths of earliest civilization to bring us a study in the nature of evil in Issues #6 and #7 and bring us in so close to observe where things are headed for Skinner. It's time to find out exactly how fine a line exists between good and evil for American Vampire.

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