On the flight back from St. Louis Sunday night I read the preview copy I'd gotten of Life Sucks by writers Jessica Abel and Gabe Soria, artist Warren Pleece, and colorist Hilary Sycamore, published by First Second. I'd gotten this preview copy of a Life Sucks a couple of months ago and was really looking forward to reading it as I've enjoyed works by Jessica Abel (writer and artist of La Perdida, Artbabe and Soundtrack) and Warren Pleece (True Faith; Garth Ennis' first comic work, Vertigo's Deadenders, and the excellent, overlooked, short-lived, left of center boy develops super powers DC comic Kinetic). So when I got the preview copy I was eager to dive into it and did so, but after almost twenty pages I was kind of disappointed and just put it on the back burner of things to read.Well I don't know what kind of bad day I was having or what bad drugs I was on when I first tried to read Life Sucks a couple of months ago because when I started reading Life Sucks Sunday night while waiting for my connecting flight I was immediately drawn into this great graphic novel.
Here's my no spoiler capsule discription of Life Sucks: Life Sucks is a very different take on the vampire genre; it's humorous, has great characters, and doesn't go into normal vampire territory. The central character of Life Sucks is Dave Miller, who works in a convenience store, is a shy vampire that doesn't want to kill to get his blood fix and has a huge crush on this hispanic gal that shops in the store he works in. There's other characters in Life Sucks who are also vampires, but what made Life Sucks so enjoyable for me was that the characters who are vampires are really just like regular people who just happen to need to drink blood. So people that like comics with slice of life rhythms and people who like stories with vampires in them that aren't just gore fests (not that those kind of vampire stories aren't enjoyable also though) will find much to enjoy with Life Sucks' rich characterizations and fluid nice clean lined art (and especially fantastic coloring hues). Life Sucks comes out in about a month and I'm happy that I got past my funky first try at reading this and can say that Life Sucks will have a long shelf life at Alternate Reality Comics!
1 comment:
I loved this book too! Dave is so awesome... I forgot they were vamps sometimes, like you said.
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