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Dhampire: Stillborn was an OGN published in the mid 90's by Vertigo. It was written and created by Nancy A. Collins, with painted art by Paul Lee. If I remember corrently, it seemed like they were hoping to make it into their next big thing, highlighting it in Previews and Wizard and such at the time. Sadly things didn't work out the way they wanted it to and the OGN title aptly describes the fate of the series, stillborn. At least they managed to get this in print before it all fell apart.

The story follows the life of Nicholas Gaunt, a young teen with a troubled past, as he attempts to discover the reasons for his rather morbid outlook on life. The answers he finds will change him forever..

Possible Spoilers











This book is 50/50. The art is fantastic and the first half of the story reads ok, but about halfway through it just turns to crap. The dialogue just gets a bit stiff, and there's a huge time jump that felt a little.. awkward.

As the story opens with Nicholas Gaunt locked in the bathroom attempting to kill himself, why? We don't really know, he doesn't really know either. He narrates the entire book and simply states that he never felt like he was supposed to be alive. The attempt lands him in the hospital with a doctor who attempts to help him unravel the reasons for his apparent mental illness through hypnotherapy. The result is a rather twisted tail regarding his birth, family and more.

When he was born he was apparently stillborn and was headed for the morgue when the attendent got a rather disturbing surprise. From there he went on to have the usual disturbed childhood. Torturing and killing small animals, an outcast at school even though he stuck to himself, and so forth and so on. The hypnosis uncovers even further hidden aspects, including the fact that the woman who had been raising was actually his grandmother and not his mother, and that he apparently had an older sister who uped and vanished while he was still young. Lots of imagers which would seem to imply that his sister was a vampire is explained away as incestious imagery by the shrink who promptly discharges him..

Which is kind of odd, but hey.

After returning home he confronts his grandmother and learns the truth. The sister was actually his mother, and he was her child.

Upon this startling revelation he does the only natural thing.. he goes to a strip club and picks up a cute looking goth girl. Some kinky sex and a road trip later and he encounters his apparently dead mother in a graveyard. She explains everything, and tells him that the only way to cure his condition is to commit horrible crimes against nature and god and to die a violent death.

Suffice to say that the story ends after a one year time gap where he apparently became a serial killer. Gets shot, and rises from the grave as his mother prepares to introduce him to his father.

The story was actually pretty interesting up until he stormed out to the strip club, it just fell apart there. The goth girl was obnoxious and really didn't seem to have a whole lot to do with anything. The meeting with his mother probably would've worked even without her and the story would've ended up the exact same way. She just felt.. tacked on and pointless. The dialogue she spouted was also incredibly bad. It was just.. lame. I mean, really.

Nicholas: "I tried to kill myself"
Girl: "That's so cool!"

Complete with a happy little smile on her face. She reminded me of this vaguely punky girl from one of the Living Dead movies. The one who kind of masturbates in the cemetary while saying the grossest way to die is to be naked and surrounded by a bunch of old men or something like that. She was just.. lame.

The time jump when he was a serial killer was a bit awkward as well. It literally goes from him talking to him mother to him in a warehouse with corpses hanging on meathooks.

The art was lovely though, and I did enjoy the first half. Hell, the later half might've made more sense if the regular series had ever come to pass, but sadly it didn't so it's just kind of.. there. I did like ending though. But..yeah. An interesting project that seemed like it might've had potential, despite the poor showing in the last portion of the book.

On an unrelated note, I just noticed that all the horror comics I focused on have been vampire books. Weirdness.