Type of bind: Comic
Label: Marvel Comics
Manufacturer: Marvel Comics
Printing Date: 2007
Publishing house: Marvel Comics
Sale Popularity Level: 604911
Studio: Marvel Comics
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Her fans have been asking for it and now Laurell K. Hamilton is going to deliver. Laurell K. Hamilton, Dabel Brothers Productions, and Marvel are coming together to give readers a look into Anita Blake's past. Written by Laurell K. Hamilton herself, along with Jonathon Green, this July will see the release of part one of a two issue limited series that takes place almost a year before the events currently being chronicled in Guilty Pleasures. You will get to see the very first time Anita and Jean-Claude meet, Anita's very first time inside Guilty Pleasures, her very first serial killer case, and a very early encounter with Edward. Prepare to be thrilled by this original story produced especially for comics.
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If you have read the original books, you will enjoy adding this to your collection
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Much ado has been made about "The First Death," a graphic novel two-parter chronicling the early work of Laurell K. Hamilton's alter ego, Anita Blake.
Well, it turns out to be much ado about... very little. The very first half is basically a stretch of rather dull police work and banter, and an empty introduction to the foppish vampire lead -- rendered in halfhearted, sometimes comically silly artwork. Hamilton should quit while she's ahead.
It opens with Anita being called out on a murder scene -- children are being slaughtered by a vampire, and the police are baffled. They pick up a suspect, a vampire stripper who is hanging around nearby, but the only reason to suspect him is that he was nearby.
So Storr and Anita go to the vampire's place of work, and encounter the flirtatious Jean-Claude, who immediately takes a shine to Anita. But then another child is killed, and the vampire's true crimes are uncovered -- and Anita is no closer to figuring out who the serial killer is.
A taut, thrilling mystery... "First Death" ain't. In fact, by the time of the contrived cliffhanger -- which has been used at least once before, in the horrible "Guilty Pleasures" comic -- I was left wondering why Hamilton even bothered to conjure up such an incredibly pointless, glacial plot, with paint-by-numbers serial killings.
Most of that plot, in fact, is taken up with staggeringly dull infodumping inside Anita's oh-so-cynical mind. Either that, or we get rambling police work saddled with excruciatingly bad dialogue straight out of a kindergarten sandbox ("I need you to do your job." "This isn't my job!" "This IS your job!"). There's even a ghastly, contrived scene where Anita body-tackles a grieving mother.... purely out of sensitivity, of course.
In fact, all this police work seems to just exist to get Anita to go to Guilty Pleasures, so Jean-Claude can hit on her relentlessly, and then provide no useful evidence whatsoever. That's right -- it has, apparently, nothing to do with the actual mystery. Agatha Christie couldn't provide this sort of twist.
As for the art... well, at least there's nary a bulging ham-thigh in sight, as there was in the excruciating "Guilty Pleasures" comic. But while it's not as funny, it is halfhearted -- weird expressions at random moments, squiggling hair curls, and the fact that Dolph and the Roman stripper are each apparently ten feet tall. Heck, Jean-Claude's facial structure changes from panel to panel.
In fact, the artwork suffers the most for Anita and Jean-Claude. Anita looks like a sulky Hot Topic goth with stunted growth, a squiggling curl stuck over her eyes, and too much makeup. And though Hamilton tries to convince us that Jean-Claude is sexy and dangerous, the foppish Byronic costume and clumsy high-school flirtations make it hard to feel impressed.
"The First Death" is a waste of time and paper -- a halfhearted crime story wrapped around an equally halfhearted romantic introduction. Just what is the point, in the end?
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When I found out that there was going to be a comic version of the Anita Blake series, I was really excited because I wanted to see what the world of Anita Blake would look like. When I got my copy, I finished it immediately. This is a really great series, and I've read all of the volumes so far. I am really glad that LKH decided to write 'First Death' because it really explains how Anita met Jean-Claude and some other things. I am really looking forward to reading 'First Death #2' and the rest of the Anita Blake comic series.
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With the sucess of the "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures" comic book, which to date has published six issues, the Dabel Brothers/Marvel Comics has been able to persuade Laurell K. Hamilton to do some original material in this format. "The First Death" is the very first example of this all-new material, along with a 9-page bonus story by Hamilton and her husband Jonathon Green that is included in the hardcover edition that collects the very first six comics of the "Guilty Pleasures" series). This prequel is also written by Hamilton and Green, with artwork by Wellinton Alves that follows the lead of Brett Booth (who does the cover), what with Anita always having that one lock of hair between her eyes.
To be clear this is the story about Anita Blake's very first real case with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team (RPIT), and not the very first time she killed a vampire. So this story does not take Anita back to the very beginning, but it does take us back before the very first novel. In terms of the Anita Blake universe this is the story of how she very first met Jean-Claude as well as the very first time she goes into Guilty Pleasures and the very first time she meets Edward. The goal here is to see how Anita "got her stripes," and Green promises that this is the case where she gets a lot her stars. But what makes it an important story is that this is the case where she becomes the dedicated Executioner that we are know from the pages of Hamilton's novels. In other words, this is how Anita becomes Anita.
What I am surprised about is that they would endeavor to do all this in a two-part limited series, because that sounds like a lot. Part of the attraction here is going back to the old days, when Anita and Dolph's professional relationship was coming together instead of falling apart (She has only known Zerbrowski for a few weeks at this time). But what is most interesting is to see Anita before she really was Anita (she throw up after seeing the victim), when she was fairly new to the job. Where these seems odd is that she is already called the Executioner, and it is hard to reconcile that reputation with the Anita we see here, so I do not think everything fits together neatly here. Maybe they needed to go back to the very first kill that set Anita on the road to becoming the Executioner rather than looking at what would be the key fork in the road of her career.
The "Anita Blake Vampire Hunter" label always struck me as more of a marketing ploy, a takeoff on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," because the novels were usually about Anita's "day" job as an animator. There were vampires involved in the stories, but rarely did Anita hunt them let alone execute them. So I like seeing a story that has, for the very first part at least, kept Anita way from zombies and focused on the vampire part of the equation. I have been happy with the comic book adaptation of "Guilty Pleasures" because I am one of those legions of fans who prefer the earlier Anita Blake novels to the more recent ones, but I very much appreciate that Hamilton is willing to go back before the beginning and flesh in the backstories on these characters.
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