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A young girl in Arizona named Bly, is about to find herself in the middle of a war that's been raging against the vampires for centuries. Sound familiar..?

Possible Spoilers








Yeah. It sounds a hell of a lot like Buffy, and seeing as how it came out after the movie that's probably not completely coincidental, even if Buffy isn't mentioned at all in their series creators influences.

I only have the first four issues of the series, which is the opening arc introducing us to Bly's world and the various groups and beings that inhabit it. The series opens with a meeting of an ancient vampiric order known as the Clave, we immediately find out that there's an ancient vampiric bible thingy that's full of prophecies, and the one that's on all the vampires minds right now is that of the Scarlett Redeemer. It doesn't take a genius to see where this is going.

One thing leads to another and young Bly suddenly finds herself being the center of much unwanted attention. First some tall creepy guy is following around a mall, then she returns home only to find her family dead and is promptly chased by a group of vampire bikers. Thankfully she's saved by the creepy tall guy who pulls out of a glowing sword. Oooo...

After such a brutal ordeal there's only one logical thing to do, repress like a mother ********. She blacks out and winds up in a hospital with almost no memory of the incident at all. She's promptly informed by the police that's she been adopted, which just adds to her stress. Meanwhile the police try to puzzle out what's going on with the help of a mysterious FBI agent by the name of Javier.

It reads a lot more smoothly then I make it sound. Lots of characters show up, and if they're not completely explained, then you at least get an idea of what side they're on.. and boy.. are there a lot of sides. First off there's the aforementioned Clave, then there's a group of other immortals who have been waging a war on them for centuries. That tall creepy guy? He's the leader of the immortal group and he also happens to be none other than Gilgamesh. The vampire bikers? A group of unaligned vampires living by their own rules and sticking it to the man, whoo! yay! Of course that mainly involves leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. FBI agent Javier? He's.. I'm not sure actually. He seems to be a vampire, but different from the rest.

Oh, and then there's my favorite vampire group ever. SAVE, the Society for the Advancement of Vampire Ecology. They're the vampires who embrace technology and run around with all sorts of nifty gadgets, drinking their blood from a needle rather than feeding in the old ways.

All these groups and figures end up converging outside of the Bly's hometown as they all attempt to capture, kill, or aide Bly as she begins to come to terms with the fact that her life has just been turned on it's head. Thankfully there's one person she can confide in with confidence.. an apparently sentient stuffed animal named Mr. Miggs.

It's not too bad of a series actually, it feels a whole lot like Buffy, which isn't really a bad thing if you go for Buffy. The story moves along fairly well, there's no awkward or clunky bits of dialogue, with the exception of Gilgamesh, but since he's an ancient Babylonian godking we can chalk that up to him being..well.. him. The art's the biggest failing. It starts off ok, but goes down hill pretty quickly. By the fourth issue it's really bland and non-descript, and there's almost no differentiation between night and day. I had to reread a line about the final issue taking place at night because it sure didn't look it. The action sequences also left something to be desired. It really felt like the art couldn't keep up with the ideas contained within the story. A giant gyr that can rend flesh from bone just appears as a few black lines against an otherwise tan background. The characters often look stiff and awkward as well. Ah well, apparently that artist was going to be taking a break though. The fourth issues letter col. mentions someone else taking over until the original artist returned with at #10.

I wish I could find other issues since I'm curious as to how long it ran and how it ended. It seemed to have a bit of a promise, and if it had come out in the late 90's it might've been found an audience among Buffy fans, assuming it didn't get crucified for being a blatant rip off or anything.

At anyrate, it's an interesting and almost completely forgotten piece of vampiric comic history. And guess what? Like every other vampire comic I've mentioned this month, it was published by DC. Talk about a crazy coincidence, huh?