Customer Reviews

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: The Laughing Corpse Book 2 - Necromancer (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter (Marvel Hardcover))

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I'm a recent fan of the Anita Blake series, and a longtime fan of graphic novels, so I decided to purchase the novelization of The Laughing Corpse.

First, for the uninitiated, The Laughing Corpse is the second novel in the Anita Blake Vampire series, and this volume Laughing Corpse-Necromancer is the middle volume of a trilogy. This is okay, but somewhat misleading, as I really wanted to start at the beginning of volume 2.

The Art:I found the artwork inconsistent and at mostly ugly and grotesque, particularly the faces of Jean Claude and Anita. Since Jean Claude is supposed to be attractive, it is difficult to see him looking so ugly. His chin is huge and so pointed he looks very unrealistic. Anita is quite exaggerated featuring pouty lips, huge breasts, and a perpetual scowl. Not cool. It seems the artist is heavily influenced by the wildstorm style of art, which focuses on lips eyes, and figure and not on features. However, this isn't always true for this artist, as some of his male characters (with the exception of Jean Claude) are well drawn.

So why the inability to draw Anita or Jean Claude? I've noticed this is a sad trend amongst male artist that faces are weakly drawn and this is consistant to the trend. However, since this artist clearly can draw some male faces, I think he chose to portray Anita and Jean Claude as grotesque and exaggerated which is odd..Since so much of what we see is Anita and Jean Claude, it is difficult to really get into a graphic novel that makes them look so bad. Also details like clothing, Anita's apartment, aren't very well drawn. It seems like the artist lacked the attention to detail that this character requires- or the interest in making the characters look attractive.

Meh. This venture into the Anita Blake Graphic Novelization was disappointing, however, I might try another just to see if it is as bad as this one.

It takes a very special, very unique kind of comic book to open with a zombie attack... and inspire nothing but boredom.

Sadly "Anita Blake The Laughing Corpse Necromancer #1" is one of those comic books, where the laundering of toys and jogging is deemed more important than anything approaching a plot. In fact once the initial threat is dealt with, nothing really happens in this entire issue -- there are a few moments that start to be exciting, but they're quickly buried under Anita's constant grandstanding and blustering.

Being a strong and ballsy heroine, Anita lets the police deal with the killer zombies while she blubbers about her toy penguins getting zombie glop on them. She has coffee. Jogs. Talks on the phone. Goes to Jean-Claude's comedy club, "The Laughing Corpse," and is forced to deal with an unfunny comedian whose zombie goes bad onstage. And then she wanders off to have an argument with Jean-Claude about whether or not she's his human servant, and whether or not she's gonna have sex with him.

Then she asks him to accompany her to the Tenderloin, a local red light district where her not-client's former girlfriend Wheelchair Wanda does her business -- and after endless conversations about nothing much, she FINALLY gets some interesting info on why he might want her corpse-raising services. And when another family is murdered, they may have tangible evidence...

I spent most of "Anita Blake The Laughing Corpse Necromancer #1" waiting for two things to happen -- anything involving action, danger and suspense, and for Anita Blake to show that she was tougher than your average melted marshmallow. Neither one did. Oh, there are a couple moments of extremely brief excitement, like Anita being assaulted by a couple of thugs (who basically don't hurt her except for a small tasteful bruise).

But it never lasts -- I mean, after being attacked by zombies, our heroine spends half that issue laundering her stuffed penguins and jogging with her far more attractive friend.

Instead, we have pages and pages of absolutely NOTHING -- long dribbling pointless conversations that lead nowhere and accomplish nothing ("Are you afraid of zombies?" "No." "You're afraid of zombies. You're phobic"), racist comments, and Anita squalling at Jean-Claude for a whole chapter. And it has a lot of unintentionally hilarious moments -- if a guy who looked like Jean-Claude (including poet shirt and thigh-high pirate boots) turned up in a red light district, he'd be handed motel keys from half a dozen dudes.

And the artwork continues to be pretty wretched -- Anita still has a giant mass of spiky hair and what appears to be a drink ring on her cheek, Jean-Claude often appears to be a marshmallow-chested alien, and Hamilton often devotes whole panels to describing the pictures. Example: "His eyes glittering in the neon signs like dark glass" -- not only is that the whole sentence, but his eyes are pale BLUE. And, well, we're looking at him, so why a whole panel devoted to him... not doing anything except having eyes?

Moreover, our whiny tiny heroine comes across as slightly more sensitive towards others, namely toward the emotionally scarred Wheelchair Wanda, but still she spends way too much time blustering, grandstanding and misquoting Clint Eastwood. She's also possibly the worst detective in the world, since we're now two-thirds of the way through the story and she's only done a little tiny bit of detective work. Most of the time, the baddies just show up and get vanquished... usually by someone ELSE.

I spent most of "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: The Laughing Corpse Book 2 - Necromancer" waiting for something to happen -- and if you can wade through hours of poor dialogue, silly art and endless posturing, there are actually a few seconds of action and detective work.

Like Guilty Pleasures and Vol 1 of this set, it rocks. The art is great and story line stays faithful! As a hardcore Hamilton fan I appreciate the efforts made in these graphic novels. Keep them coming!

I haven't read any of the source material for this HC but I must admit this is one of the slowest reads I've ever had. Some plotlines are developed but not enough to take up a whole book. There was no 'action' in the book and an awful lot of inner monologue that really felt unnecessary. It felt as though the writer was attempting to show horrific & terrible situations in an adult & meaningful way but it just didn't work.
Overall this felt like an interlude before the main event in the next book. A reader could probably skip this volume & read the previously in the next book & they wouldn't have missed anything.

She just gets worse an worse. It's like reading a train wreck. The back cars don't know what crap is coming but the first cars sure do.

This comic book aka graphic novel follows the book very well. The artwork is also very good. If you like vampires or the Anita Blake early novels, you'll like this book.