Blood: a Tale [Comic]

J. M. DeMatteis (Author), Kent Williams (Illustrator)

Product Details

• Comic: 200 pages
• Publisher: Epic Comics (October 26, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871354926
• ISBN-13: 978-0871354921
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,619,104 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, J. M. DeMatteis was a professional musician and rock music journalist before entering the comic book field.

Although he's written almost all of the major DC and Marvel icons--including memorable runs on Spider-Man and Justice League--DeMatteis's greatest greatest acclaim has come for sophisticated original graphic novels like Seekers Into The Mystery, Blood: A Tale, The Last One, and Mercy. The autobiographical Brooklyn Dreams was picked by the ALA as one of the Ten Best Graphic Novels and Booklist, in a starred review, called it "as graphically distinguished and creatively novelistic a graphic novel as has ever been...a classic of the form." The groundbreaking Moonshadow was chosen (along with Brooklyn Dreams, Blood and other DeMatteis works) for inclusion in Gene Kanenberg, Jr's 2008 book 500 Essential Graphic Novels. "While Sandman may be the best known fantasy comic," he wrote, "Moonshadow is arguably the finest."

More recently DeMatteis has had great success with the acclaimed children's fantasy Abadazad --which Entertainment Weekly, giving the series an A grade, hailed as "...one of those very rare fantasy works that can enchant preteen kids and 40-year old fanboys..." and Publisher's Weekly, in a starred review, called "an appealing blend of Spirited Away and The Wizard of Oz." Abadazad began life as a CrossGen comic book before morphing into a three-book series, a unique blend of prose, illustration and sequential art, published by Disney's Hyperion Books For Children.

His success in the comic book medium has led DeMatteis to work in both television (writing live action and animation) and movies (creating screenplays for Fox, Disney Feature Animation, directors Carlo Carlei and Chris Columbus and producer Dean Devlin, among others).

DeMatteis's latest work includes the fantasy novel Imaginalis, published in July, 2010 by HarperCollins, and a variety of television and comic book projects.

DeMatteis and his family live in upstate New York. His blogs can be found here at Amazon.com and at www.jmdematteis.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful story-telling in watercolor, June 4, 2005

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Blood (Paperback)

This is a complex story, not easy to follow, maybe a bit disjoint. It's a vampire story, it's birth and death, it's aliens and Hades, and deformity and beauty.

Mostly, it's an incredible effort in visual narration, with the narration priovided by DeMatteis and the visuals by Kent Williams. Watercolors carry most of the story, and carry it in warm, sympathetic renderings of figure. GIven the nature of mixed media, it's never easy to distinguish between painting and drawings in pen, brush, or dry media, but the distinctions don't matter and often combine. Williams' artwork conveys every feeling needed, from love (or something like it), to despair, the blankness of clinical depression, to death and to emotions with no easy names.

The visual story is never better than the story itself, though, or not much better. I found the plot a bit weak - jumpy, ill-connected, and lacking in causal relations. It had moments, though, like vampiric nursing, that grab the reader. I enjoy graphic narration for the combination of graphics and narration. This time, it's the graphics that do the job.

//wiredweird

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blood, blood everywhere, February 23, 2006

By 

Denzuko1 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood (Paperback)

I have read this book many years ago and found that it is difficult to understand. There are two stories altogher and it hops from one story to the other and back, continuing to confuse the readers. Only when you complete the book that you can fully understand the whole story. I love this book as it forces the readers to think and trying to make logic out of the confusion.

The story is presented with great artwork fully in water color. The graphic alone would worth the money. This book is one worth collecting if you are a collector of Graphic Novels.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'The' masterwork, September 15, 2001

By 

Melis Sohtaoðlu - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood: a Tale (Comic)

Although not mentioned here,Kent Williams is the illustrator of this series and he has done a great work in illustrating this genuine story written by Jim DeMatteis.'Blood' is not a classical comic based on heroes or childish imaginations.It is a tale that stands alone, completing itself and every page of it is a magnificient piece of art.
The tale is 'told' inside the tale, creating layers sometimes linked to each other in very poetic and unexpected ways.The greatness of the artwork quickly pulls you inside the story and you never want the tale to end and it doesn't...in some way.