brightbeautifulthings's review
3.0
I’ve been reading Anita Blake for more than a decade, but this is my first adventure into the realm of the graphic novels. I liked the idea of representing the world in art and sharing it with a whole new set of readers, but without any actual intention of reading them myself. I don’t gravitate toward graphic novels, but I’m working on that. What finally pushed me toward The First Death is that I can’t read it anywhere else; this is the only origin story that’s been published and, well, you had me at Edward burns down a house full of vampires with a flamethrower.
A prequel to Guilty Pleasures, The First Death is animator and vampire slayer Anita Blake’s first hunt with the bounty-hunter-turned-assassin, Edward. While working a case with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, Anita stumbles on a kiss of vampires who have murdered upwards of twenty people, including children. While the police have their hands tied with red tape, Anita already has a warrant of execution–all she needs is backup.
I’m a huge fan of the artwork in this book. On the whole, it’s really well-done and the characters are faithfully represented. Anita, Edward, and Jean-Claude are near-perfect, and it’s exciting to see characters I’ve loved for years in color on a page. My only two hangups are that everyone is attractive, down to Dolph and Dead Dave. Anita has a lot of gorgeous men in her life, but with the exception of Jean-Claude, most of them don’t show up until many books later. The other is that in nearly every frame, Anita’s hair is in her face, which I doubt the tough-as-nails vampire slayer would tolerate for long.
It was very strange to see such a young Anita in action. She’s more innocent and timid than she is even in Guilty Pleasures, and I liked this insight into her younger self (while also missing the Take No Shit Anita that I love). She has barely any sarcasm for anyone, especially Jean-Claude, and there’s a laugh out loud scene where it takes her a few moments to realize that Zerbrowski is staring at her ass–something later Anita would notice and shut down immediately. I liked the story, but I found myself missing the descriptions of people and places that are always filtered through Anita’s sassy and critical perspective. I know the art is supposed to take its place, but nothing ever really eclipses actual writing for me, and I found it more difficult to get immersed in the story.
There are places where graphic novels emphasize in their own ways: the first time we see Jean-Claude, he breaks out of his frame like the gorgeous and attention-demanding vampire that he is, and there’s an entire page devoted to Anita/Edward bonding that I loved. But there are also points where I felt like I missed some of the action, that a scene jumped ahead too quickly and left me scrambling to figure out what was going on, and it could have used another frame or two to clear things up. I can’t decide if this is just the way the graphic novels go or if it’s because this is the novella version of a graphic novel and it got a little rushed.
The First Death is actually much shorter than it looks at first glance, since the second half is devoted to a handbook of people and places from this and Guilty Pleasures. I only read about two of them before I realized that it was basically just summarizing things that happen in the first novel without any new information, and then I gave it up. I read the book; I know what happens. I did enjoy flipping through the art for characters who weren’t in The First Death though, and I found myself wishing for illustrations of Richard, Micah, Nathaniel, Asher, and others from later books. The graphic novels stop at Circus of the Damned, so that’s probably wishful thinking. While this could never take the place of the books for me, I did enjoy it, and there’s a chance I’ll look into the existing graphic novels eventually.
I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.
A prequel to Guilty Pleasures, The First Death is animator and vampire slayer Anita Blake’s first hunt with the bounty-hunter-turned-assassin, Edward. While working a case with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, Anita stumbles on a kiss of vampires who have murdered upwards of twenty people, including children. While the police have their hands tied with red tape, Anita already has a warrant of execution–all she needs is backup.
I’m a huge fan of the artwork in this book. On the whole, it’s really well-done and the characters are faithfully represented. Anita, Edward, and Jean-Claude are near-perfect, and it’s exciting to see characters I’ve loved for years in color on a page. My only two hangups are that everyone is attractive, down to Dolph and Dead Dave. Anita has a lot of gorgeous men in her life, but with the exception of Jean-Claude, most of them don’t show up until many books later. The other is that in nearly every frame, Anita’s hair is in her face, which I doubt the tough-as-nails vampire slayer would tolerate for long.
It was very strange to see such a young Anita in action. She’s more innocent and timid than she is even in Guilty Pleasures, and I liked this insight into her younger self (while also missing the Take No Shit Anita that I love). She has barely any sarcasm for anyone, especially Jean-Claude, and there’s a laugh out loud scene where it takes her a few moments to realize that Zerbrowski is staring at her ass–something later Anita would notice and shut down immediately. I liked the story, but I found myself missing the descriptions of people and places that are always filtered through Anita’s sassy and critical perspective. I know the art is supposed to take its place, but nothing ever really eclipses actual writing for me, and I found it more difficult to get immersed in the story.
There are places where graphic novels emphasize in their own ways: the first time we see Jean-Claude, he breaks out of his frame like the gorgeous and attention-demanding vampire that he is, and there’s an entire page devoted to Anita/Edward bonding that I loved. But there are also points where I felt like I missed some of the action, that a scene jumped ahead too quickly and left me scrambling to figure out what was going on, and it could have used another frame or two to clear things up. I can’t decide if this is just the way the graphic novels go or if it’s because this is the novella version of a graphic novel and it got a little rushed.
The First Death is actually much shorter than it looks at first glance, since the second half is devoted to a handbook of people and places from this and Guilty Pleasures. I only read about two of them before I realized that it was basically just summarizing things that happen in the first novel without any new information, and then I gave it up. I read the book; I know what happens. I did enjoy flipping through the art for characters who weren’t in The First Death though, and I found myself wishing for illustrations of Richard, Micah, Nathaniel, Asher, and others from later books. The graphic novels stop at Circus of the Damned, so that’s probably wishful thinking. While this could never take the place of the books for me, I did enjoy it, and there’s a chance I’ll look into the existing graphic novels eventually.
I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.
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