American Vampire Vol. 3 (HC)

Scott Snyder continues to dazzle us with more tales of vamps & the heroes who encounter them. With each volume comes a new era of blood-suckers and their influence on the underworld of society. This volume contains 3 blood-soaked tales featuring familiar characters from the previous volumes. Each story is illustrated by a different artist.

Strange Frontier :  You can’t keep a good vampire down, especially when it’s Skinner

                               Sweet. Platte River, Idaho 1919. Sweet stumbles upon Colonel

                                 Seldom French & his travelling theatre of actors. They put on a show for a captive audience depicting the events that lead to Skinner Sweet’s demise. But Sweet knows the truth on how those events             

                               really took place and he’s about to give Colonel French & his

                               second rate performers a history lesson on the real Skinner Sweet,

                                vampire style.

                                This is a simple story about Skinner Sweet just being the bastard that

                                 he is, by slashing & biting his way through a group of travelling

                                  actors. Miss Kitty Banks (from the first volume) crosses path with                                     

                                  Sweet for one last goodbye. Illustrated by Danijel Zezelj. My least

                                 favourite story because of my distaste of the illustrations.

Ghost War :  Honolulu, Hawaii 1943. Henry Preston & his vampire wife Pearl Jones are

                       stationed at a U.S naval base when Henry gets an unexpected visitor.

                       Agent Hobbs of The Vassals Of The Morning Star has a special mission                                                     

                       for him. With the help of 4 VMS agents, infiltrate the island of Taipan

                       which has a possible vampire nest and protect U.S forces from any

                       vampiric attacks. For Skinner Sweet this is just the opportunity to exact his

                        revenge. But what they discover on the island is not what they expected,

                        the reality is much, much worse.

                        Now we’re getting to the meat & potatoes of this volume. War is hell, but

                        It’s worse with vampires, especially with a new strain of vampires who are

                        more feral than your average blood-sucker. Some great character

                         development for Henry, Pearl & Skinner as they’re thrust into, not

                        one, but two wars. One with Japanese troops & the other with vampires.

                        Wonderful illustrations by Rafael Albuquerque.

Survival Of The Fittest : New York City 1941, Headquarters of The Vassals of The

                                           Morning Star. Agent Felicia Book & Agent Cash McCogan

                                           Are 2 of VMS’ greatest operators and Hobbs has a new

                                           mission for them. A Romanian botanist known as Erik Pavel

                                           has developed a compound extracted from phosphoric plants

                                            that he has named “Psoralen”. VMS’ intel believes that this

                                           psoralen is a potential cure for vampirism. Disguised as

                                           wealthy American investors, Book & McCogan must infiltrate

                                          Castle Vlan, try to re-establish contact with under cover agent

                                           Mayer & investigate further about the truth of psoralen. The

                                           Agents Of The Vassals Of The Morning Star are trained to

                                          deal with anything the vamps can throw at them, but nothing

                                           will prepare them for the horrors that await at Castle Vlan.

                                          A good WW2 story that feels more like a Hellboy story with

                                          spooky European castles, secret agents & vampire Nazis. Wild

                                          Indiana Jones styled action with plenty of plasma that will

                                          satisfy any vampire fan. Sean Murphy’s fantastic illustrations

                                          really sets the mood. There’s a page where Dr. Pavel is about

                                          to start his demonstrations and the Nazi vamps are in the

                                          shadows and all you see is their glowing red eyes. Gave me

                                          chills.

A great addition to this great series. If you like the 2 previous books, you’re gonna love this third volume. Originally published as American Vampire #12-#18 & American Vampire : Survival Of The Fittest #1-#5. From DC/Vertigo.