Bad Blood TPB

Life was hard enough for Trick Croft as a college student and a cancer patient—then the vampires attacked and slaughtered his best friend. Now Trick knows that his blood is poison to the bloodsuckers, and he will stop at nothing to eradicate them.

From early on, I could tell I had come across a cool new take on the vampire genre.  One might tend to shy away from more of it, but rest assured this is not your average bloodsucker tale.  It doesn’t go completely off the rails, but it strays far enough out to not be another rehashed version.  Once you get going on Bad Blood, you’ll know you found a strong new one.

As if he wasn’t struggling enough trying to beat cancer, Trick has his life even more twisted up after losing his two closest friends to a vampire.  Realizing that his “tainted blood” from the chemo meds is poison to vamps, he sets off on a vengeful mission to destroy them all.  After pairing up with a so to speak vampire groupie stripper, they eventually find a real life vampire hunter to aid in their quest.  As unlikely as a team as they may be, they do prove themselves worthy adversaries.

This dark, yet emotional story was given a nice treatment by the artist.  There are a lot of times you can almost feel the tired, weak state Trick is in.  Given the genre of course, we also get some really nicely drawn fight scenes with no shortage of gore.  Tyler Crook’s style of art is really interesting and I just thought it was nearly perfect for this story.

I really appreciate when a book like this comes along that can take a unique approach to an often done subject.  I also truly appreciate the way this book dealt with the evil that is cancer which affects so many.  All personal feelings on that aside, this is a really well done book with a gripping story.  If you haven’t followed along with the individual issues, I’d highly recommend grabbing this trade.

For more on Bad Blood or other Dark Horse books, check out Dark Horse Comics.

Bad Blood will be available 11/26

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.