REVIEW: Bite Club #1 (of 6)

Writers: Howard Chaykin & David Tischman
Artist: David Hahn
Review: Will Dubbeld

I can't pin down when exactly vampires ceased being bloodthirsty creatures to be feared and started unlife as trendy pop-culture fixtures. Certainly it wasn't with Bram Stoker's Transylvanian nobleman or Le Fanu's Carmilla. Was Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles to blame? Or was it The Lost Boys? Although they were a bit tragically hip, the gothic-punk aesthetic of it all was too counterculture for the mainstream. Marvel's Tomb of Dracula or perhaps the Vampire: The Masquerade roleplaying game?
Again, I think not.

I can't help but think the trend started with a deluge of Young Adult teen drama novels. Series like Vampire Diaries, Vampire Academy and, of course, Twilight, I think are largely responsible for the transition of vampires from folkloric terrors of the night to watered-down commonplace figures of fiction. Bite Club is either a forerunner or contemporary in the mix.



Years ago I was immediately drawn to Bite Club. Frank Quitely's cover art for issue 1 is a dynamic mélange of erotica and the grotesque, and I was transfixed. Recently I acquired the first miniseries on the cheap and after reading the first issue found myself a bit underwhelmed. Bite Club takes place in a world where vampirism is a publicly known and acknowledged phenomena, which is strike 1 in my opinion. Taking away the mystique of vampires and making them public knowledge immediately draws my scorn.
Set in Miami, we learn that the vampire populace in the city is an acknowledged ethnic minority of 300,000 and we're shown scenes of the undead at the dentist, at the beach, and one of the main characters is even an ordained priest. It's reminiscent of the dynamic in the Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood franchise and, as appealing as topless Anna Paquin is, I can't abide the backdrop.

The book opens with the murder of a vampire family's patriarch and the second act is pretty much a series of vignettes introducing his three children. One of the sons is an archetypical organized crime figurehead complete with disdain for authority and human life, and the other is our aforementioned vampire priest who, of course, has shed the bloodthirsty ways of his family and seeks the glory of God etc. etc. The third child is a daughter who fills the cookie-cutter part of vampiric sex-vixen murderess, who is, "a sexual predator with an eye for talent", and, "has killed somewhere between ten and fifteen men and women . . . all in the name of her hunt for sexual satisfaction."

As one does.

The book wraps up at the funeral and wake of Eduardo del Toro, our previously mentioned decedent, as the family gathers for the reading of the will. We're treated to the stereotypical family drama of siblings being catty to one another, the del Toro matriarch's torrid affair, and the unlikeliest family member being named heir to the del Toro fortune. Pretty well by-the-numbers, all said and done.

I had high hopes for Bite Club, and perhaps the remaining 5 issues will turn the series around, but the first part delivered barely par-level plot and art that is only slightly above Archie Comics caliber in its cartoonishness. Perhaps if Quitely had done the interiors as well as the cover, I would have had at least a visual distraction, but I'm pretty sure the best part of the book was a eulogy for the then recently departed Julius Schwartz, beautifully written by Karen Berger.

If you're looking for a classic horror tale about bloodsucking monstrosities, read 30 Days of Night. The vampires in that book are still vicious fucking murder machines with alien attitude. If you're interested in a procedural murder mystery/mafia story that happens to incidentally feature vampires, Bite Club will be your jam.

That Frank Quitely cover art is still goddamn amazing, though . . .