American Vampire 1976

American Vampire 1976
Scott Snyder, writer; Rafael Albuquerque, art & covers; Dave McCaig, colors; Tula Lotay, Francesco Francavilla & Ricardo López Ortiz, additional art
DC Black Label, 2021

This ninth American Vampire collection is set in 1976. Skinner Sweet has become mortal (which looked ambiguous to me in the previous collection). His desire for recovered immortality is a driving force in this arc. but it is far from the only one.  His old lover Pearl Jones (Preston) shows up in the company of  Jim Book, another old acquaintance who Skinner had turned into a vampire and was thought dead. They want him to help them steal a train car which is part of the Bicentennial celebration and contains a map that will show the location of the Council Of Firsts (who represent the ancestral monsters).

They need the Firsts to figure out how to fix a garden which will provide the only thing that can kill the Beast, an ancient evil who is served by the Gray Trader--all of which I only vaguely remember, since it has been five years since the last installment of the series. But I was comfortable in the hands of the creative team, who seem to have plotted all this out beforehand, possibly from the beginning. The story is full of old-school notes referring back to previous issues and story arcs.

Other recurring characters include Agent Pool (of the vampire hunting organization Vassals of the Morning Star, VMS), Travis Kidd (the rockabilly vampire killer who used wooden fangs and whose slogan was "bite them back"), Dracula (I think we have seen him before), and Felicia Book (daughter of James Book, and a VMS member). The First turn out to have a deep American connection. They came over from Europe and made a pact with General Washington in exchange for refuge. The Tongue also appear, another group vying for power which I had forgotten.

The seventh issue is a fun interlude called "Family Trees," relating historical stories with guest illustrators. But it all comes to a head during the big Bicentennial celebration on July 4, 1976. Even President Ford has come over the the side of the Beast, who he calls "our true Lord." The conclusion is a huge battle between good and evil, which is meant to be an apocalypse for all of humanity. But Skinner comes through, surprising everyone. The publisher blurbs all call this the closing chapter, but Snyder says that there will be more. He always intended to bring the story up to the present.

 

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  • This is the ninth collection, but isn't it also the earliest chronologically? Are the "old school notes" foreshadowing? My question is this: How well do you think this volume would serve as an introduction to the series for someone who has never read it before? 

  • No, it's the latest chronologically, The series began in the 1920s and moved forward in time from there. I would recommend starting at the beginning. This story assumes so much familiarity with the history that it is definitely not new reader friendly. Given the publication gap, it's not even very old reader friendly!

    Jeff of Earth-J said:

    This is the ninth collection, but isn't it also the earliest chronologically? Are the "old school notes" foreshadowing? My question is this: How well do you think this volume would serve as an introduction to the series for someone who has never read it before? 

  • Oh! For some reason I thought 1976 was a prequel. Thanks for setting me straight!

  • As you say, DC has been saying all along that this is the final chapter. I got it for that reason -- I have the other eight volumes in hardback, so this finishes the set. If that hadn't been the case, I might not have, as my enthusiasm has long since been banked.

    I LOVED this series when it first started, mainly for the world-building. For those just now reading the series, Snyder established that all old-school monsters exist or existed, and they are all species of vampire! Werewolves, mummies, giants, etc., are all related in this cosmology, and in a way it makes sense. ("Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!") Things you don't see any more, like giants, are species that have gone extinct.

    This also explains the varying myths about vampires. The stories vary and contradict, because there are varying species. So garlic might stop one sort of vampire, but not another. And some species are lucid, wear nice clothes and easily pass for human (Dracula), whereas other species are feral. Every vampire movie, TV show, novel, short story, myth, legend and folk tale were explained at a stroke, with many of the other monsters explained as well.

    I thought that part was brilliant, and I loved any scene that expounded on this cosmology. The scenes set in Vassals HQ, with all the displays, were ones I would pore over for the cool reveals. I wouldn't have minded a series that did nothing except tell history through this lens, explaining which stories, myths and/or legends were based in "fact." ("Oh, Jack the Ripper? Yeah, he was one of ours. Went mad and was going to expose the London clan at Winchester. We had to take him out.")

    And no complaints about Rafael Albuquerque, who was terrific throughout.

    But the story was told mainly through Pearl (who was a likable character) and Skinner Sweet (who was not), with history just the background. I enjoyed the Pearl scenes, but whenever Skinner was on panel, I'd lose interest.

    As with Walking Dead's Negan, I felt like Skinner was a character that the writer liked so much that he just expected us to like him, too, without giving us a reason to do so. His entire characterization was 1) he was selfish and 2) he liked candy. I found him boring and unpleasant.

    And this volume had too much Skinner, so I my enjoyment was tempered quite a bit.

    And a surprise that he came through in the end? Not to me. Clearly, he was there to do just that, because there was no other reason for him to have survived so long. To my mind, his continued presence added little, and when he was the focus, it felt like a digression from the main narrative (which was driven by Pearl). So, IMHO, the writer always had his redemption in mind, just as Negan was redeemed (even though he was unredeemable in my eyes).

    And I also got the impression that the story had been planned out since the beginning, which I enjoy. But the twin revelations at the end (about why Skinner bit Pearl, and the push-pull of American dualism) rang hollow to me.

    On the first one, it never occurred to me to wonder why Skinner did anything, because his middle name was "self-gratification." He scratched every itch as it occurred, and everything he did was impulsive, so why not bite Pearl? He felt like doing it, so he did it. No mystery there.

    tl;dr I had no reason to question his motives, as he appeared to have none, except "do as thou wilt."

    On the second, usually when there's a reveal like this at the end of a series, all the places where it was subtext or thematically implied would leap to mind. But when I thought back over the series, I drew a blank. It felt tacked on.

    But maybe I'm just getting old and my reading comprehension is fading. Or maybe I'm just forgetting, because it has been a while since American Vampire was canceled. It may read better on a second go-through, now that I know where it ends. Knowing the story structure helps pull one through the rough patches.

    As to whether it will continue to the present, once again, the publisher keeps saying that this is the last volume. And Snyder must believe that, too, because he tied up all the plotlines with a bow. Even the back cover shouts "LAST RIDE" in 72-point type.

    But, hey, maybe it'll happen. Vampires do have a tendency to not stay dead!

    I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, and I would recommend the series. It's just not the Dark Knight Returns-level story I thought it would be at the beginning. It's very good, but doesn't rise to must-read for me.

  • I just found the interview I think I was remembering, with CBR in October, 2020:

    "I don't know when we're all going to get together again and do the book," Snyder confessed to CBR. "We always had this plan to end it in 1976 but then take it to the present and, in the present, do these series with modular stories like B.P.R.D. for Hellboy through the V.M.S., our organization that hunts monsters. It'd be something along those lines where we do cases in the present starring the characters from the original series and those cases would be informed by or flashback to moments in history and modular stories that took place in the past... We want to return and come back to it -- it's like our home base -- but this will be the end of this long, cumulative kind of driving narrative we've been telling all along."

    So I guess it is the conclusion of the main story, which makes the "Last Ride" statement reasonable. But, he was also saying that he wanted to do more, and fairly recently.

  • There's already a sort-of template for that in the Lord of Nightmares miniseries, which is volume 5 of the overall series.

  • Also, color me annoyed that volume 9 has different trade dress than vols 1-8.

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