Already a hit in the direct market, Scott Snyder’s American Vampire is starting to catch on in bookstores as readers discover Snyder’s clever new take on the vampire genre.  Snyder posits vampires as a population made up of different types of bloodsuckers with different powers and weaknesses.  He focuses on a new bloodline of vamps born in the American West in the late 1800s starting with a notorious outlaw named Skinner Sweet, who awakes from death and discovers that he has become a new kind of vampire: stronger, faster, and impervious to sunlight.

 

Stephen King, who was sent an early version of Snyder’s Vertigo comic with hopes that the horror maestro would provide a blurb, liked the concept so much that he wrote a five-part story featuring the series’ protagonist Skinner Sweet.  In American Vampire Snyder has created a layered story, which chronicles the development of this new species of vampire against a well-delineated background of American history.  Particularly interesting is Skinner’s complicated relationship with Pearl Jones, a struggling silent film actress in 1920s Hollywood.  Those who like complex, character-driven horror sagas will enjoy the third hardcover American Vampire hardcover, due out in February.  The trade paperback editon of the first volume streets in comic stores this week.