DC vs. Vampires #2

DC vs. Vampires #2

DC Comics 2021

Written by James Tynion IV & Matthew Rosenberg

Illustrated by Otto Schmidt

Lettered by Tom Napolitano

The war for the very survival of the human race has begun! A mysterious new vampire lord has already put a plan in motion to conquer the Earth, and the first step is-destroy the Justice League! But the World’s Greatest Detective might be Earth’s last hope, and it’s time for the Bat-Family to hunt!

I really wasn’t all that sure about this series and yet the first issue was so good that I knew I was going to continue reading the series. If we see the kind of deaths throughout this, in each issue, that we’ve seen the last issue and in this one I’m all for it. I mean this one I would never have seen coming and this is one of the things that I find infinitely fascinating. We also see the world’s other great non-powered superhero detective make his presence known and I’d love to see how he found out about all this. There is also one moment of this that I adore and that’s the deduction of which teams might already have been infiltrated and why the JLA would be too hard to, which if you read the last issue you already know that it was all too easy to do.

I’m loving the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information are impeccably handled. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances does a magnificent job with how we see their personalities. The pacing is excellent and how this takes us through the pages revealing more the story the ending of the issue comes all too soon.

I’m really impressed with the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. I’m also liking the way that we see these layers open up new avenues to be explored. Now whether these are going to be explored or not, like with those three remaining villains, they all add this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward are impeccably handled.

The interiors here are so classic comic book style and they are glorious. I love how we see some different styles as well, the page with the groups or that scene with the villains all bring a different mood, tone and feel to the moments. The way we see backgrounds could be a lot better, there just aren’t enough of them being used in my humble opinion. Still how we see the composition within the panels brings out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows an excellent eye for how colour works.

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This is a much deeper book than I was expecting it to be. I was surprised to not see Stephanie Brown with the Bat-Family but okay. The way that this is unfolding and how sneaky they are going about this is really something to witness. Was Everyman supposed to turn those he met with, they knew something was up just not the real scope of it, is our former hero now the messenger of death? I dunno but i’m fascinated to see the way this is playing out thanks to this superb writing and interesting characterisation along with these stunningly classic interiors.