Comics Review: "Graveyard Shift" #1

- by Señor Editor, 2 January 2015

Happy New Year! You know how many great new comics came out this week? NONE. Nothing really came out this week, unless you count a “S.H.I.E.L.D.” comic, and why would you. So I had to go back a little and revisit the stuff from last week that I may have missed. And there was a Jay Faerber comic in there! COOL.

Click to enlarge.

“Graveyard Shift” is written by Faerber and drawn by Fran Bueno. It’s a comicbook about vampires, but don’t hold that against it. It’s apparently a project that Faerber has been slowly working on for years now, and while the first issue of this miniseries isn’t really revolutionary, it’s a good read. Besides, after “Copperhead” I will pretty much check out anything that Faerber does.

The book opens at 4:30am, in a building where cops are about to do a bust on a Tobias Strickland. As they search the apartment, Strickland surprises them, attacking them from the ceiling and beating the crap out of them, before taking a shot to the chest and falling out the window, into a river. Tobias Strickland is a vampire, if you didn’t yet pick up on that.

A short time later, we see Liam, one of the cops from the bust earlier, come back to the loft he shares with his fiancée Hope. They talk about all kinds of everyday things (in a bit that’s actually very well written and immediately showing what their like, as people) and Liam mentions how he and the other cops we already met, are planning a weekend fishing trip. Little does Liam know, all his buddies are already dead, gruesomely murdered around town. And whoever got to them, will visit Liam before he and Hope are done talking.

That’s all the plot I’m gonna spoil here. This is a first issue, so it’s all set-up, but I don’t wanna give away the ending.

Vampires. Immune to shotgun.

A cop versus vampires! While vampires are a pretty tired topic right now, this issue reads really well. The vampires aren’t of the sparkly variety – they seem to be very much like the classic version. The dialogues read well, the pace is fast, and everything just flows smoothly. Liam and Hope are both very likeable characters, and given that we’ve only known them for a couple pages so far, that’s an accomplishment.

Fran Bueno’s art is just great. It’s a mix between a realistic style and a clean, well-defined comic style. He draws people, in all shapes and sizes, not just two body types and two faces over and over, like a lot of superhero comics artists. The facial expressions are great – just look at that little smile Hope does on page 8 (below). The action scenes are dynamic and engaging.

While nobody can say with a clear conscience that vampire comics is a niche that hasn’t been filled yet, “Graveyard Shift” (the name alluding both to Liam’s night shift’s as a cop, as well as the undead) #1 is a very good read. And I’d like to know what the cops were there to arrest Tobias for, in the first place. I will definitely give it a chance and see how Faerber and Bueno handle this cops vs vampires thing. And you should check it out, too!  

 
So. Are you still hungover? Did you buy this comic last week? What did you think of it? You didn’t buy “S.H.I.E.L.D.”, right? Leave us a comment!

Tagged: comics, Reviews.

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