Customer Reviews

Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: The First Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter (Marvel Paper))

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This is an extremely poor offering from the Anita Blake series both in terms of narrative and design. 'The First Death' is a prequel to Hamilton's Vampire Hunter series, finally bringing to light one of the murder cases mentioned in several of her later novels, as well as introducing us to a younger Anita and an earlier encounter with RPIT, Dolph, Storr and of course, the first meeting with Jean Claude.

The execution of this introduction is very disappointing; overall there is no information we have not already gleaned from subsequent novels, and more to the point, the character design is sketchy, relying on introductory quips and staple lines which are also lifted from the later books. There is no sense of newness here; the closest we approach to it is a five second scene with the Jean Claude, who as always has some innate sex appeal, but even so is disappointing in his first meeting with Anita. The two both fail to act either as attracted or repulsed as they should.

The paint-by-numbers illustration of an already told narrative aside, the comic book itself is poorly done; artist Brett Booth, who illustrated the first Anita Blake: Guilty Pleasures volume is passed over for another artist who, though imitating his design sketches, fails to achieve either that sense of sex appeal and grotesque which Booth created in the earlier volume. Muscles and sharp angles are rejected in favour of a softer look for all the characters, which in an extremely charitable reading we could say perhaps reflects Anita's state of innocence, more reasonably just makes what should be sexy curves look like a badly-drawn big arse. There is no finnesse in the illustrations and the entire novel fails to produce striking images that can stick with the reader.

If that isn't enough to put you off, I am disheartened by the fact that the cover artwork for this prequel IS done by Brett Booth; extremely misleading for the reader who purchases the text online. Booth is also credited on Amazon, so it is near impossible to predict that his artwork does not take centre stage.

Finally, and worst of all, this hardcover is a poor investment as HALF of the book is taken over by an entirely redundant 'Guide to Guilty Pleasures'. That's right: half of this hardcover is filled with pages and pages of redundant explicating material and character sketches which are completely useless and superfluous for anyone who has read either the first comic volume or the actual Guilty Pleasures novel. I doubt any of us need the confirmation provided in boring biographies of the main characters in a New York Times Bestselling series. They are a waste of pages.

This hardcover version of the comic is definitely not worth its cost. If you want to read the prequel, try getting the single releases.

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. This prequel is a leaden exercise full of dull police work, vampire-slaying banter, and an empty introduction to a foppish vampire and a rather unmenacing assassin. And it's all rendered in halfhearted, sometimes comically silly artwork and dialogue. 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 for some reason they need her there even though she fails to tell them anything. The only suspect is a vampire who happens to be nearby, so Sergeant 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 Anita finds that she may be dealing with a gang of vampires. Anita and her partner Manny infiltrate the vampires' base of operations, but find only a recently deceased corpse -- and when Anita returns to her office, she finds the assassin Edward, known absurdly as "Death," sitting in her chair.

Despite her hatred of Edward, Anita finds that she may need his help, since she's not getting any closer to finding the serial-killing vampires. And when she discovers a lead to the case, Anit and Manny head straight into a devastating trap, from which only "Death" himself may be able to rescue them...

A taut, thrilling mystery... "First Death" ain't. Laurell K. Hamilton just sort of halfheartedly slaps together a glacial, pointless plot with minimal detective work. In fact, she doesn't even bother to craft a NEW mystery -- she just embellishes a storyline that was summarized back in her first novel. Whoa, I wonder how this will turn out.

Even worse, Hamilton fritters most of the storyline away -- it's a disjointed string of crime scenes, zombie raisings, inept vampire-hunting, and really bad banter ("Blow a hole in them big enough, it slows them down pretty good"). Our intrepid heroine spends most of the plot sitting in a car, an office, or a strip club, and occasionally tackling a grieving mother to the ground (to show her concern, of course).

By the time we arrive at the climax, it feels like Hamilton realized that she's running out of space, and tried to cram the rest of the plot into the remaining pages. Torture, beatings and murder are glossed over in just a few pages, so it can finish on time.

And all this is just so Anita can meet Jean-Claude and Edward. Jean-Claude has nothing to do with the plot at all, so he just provides ruffled shirts and high-school flirtations -- he's as sexy and dangerous as a bowl of pudding. Edward is far better -- his easygoing-killer attitude seems even more likable besides Anita's humorless tough-grrlness. He tends to get the best lines, not to mention the great scene where he toasts a house.

Anita herself is a joke -- she seems more like a stunted, sulky Hot Topic teenager with too much makeup. Hamilton tries to portray her as a tough and powerful woman, but since Anita is repeatedly rescued by the Big Male Cop and Big Male Assassin, it's hard to see her that way. In fact, the most deadly thing she does in the whole story is stake a vampire who is unconscious and bound. Oooh, scary. I can see why the vampires as so frightened of her.

"The First Death" is a waste of time and paper -- a halfhearted crime story wrapped around an equally halfhearted pair of introductions. Definitely not worth a read.

Does it give a whole lot of new information on Anita Blake? No. Is it entertaining? Yes. Come on folks, it's not like we read Anita Blake for the intellectual stimulation. It's a thoroughly entertaining vampire fantasy and this graphic novel represents that fairly. I think the illustrations where fitting and interesting. I loved having a little back story on Anita and Jean Claudes first meeting and I enjoyed it. Was I blown away? No. But I wasn't really expecting to be. I got what I expected...an entertaining story with great illustrations.

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. This prequel is a leaden exercise full of dull police work, vampire-slaying banter, and an empty introduction to a foppish vampire and a rather unmenacing assassin. And it's all rendered in halfhearted, sometimes comically silly artwork and dialogue. 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 for some reason they need her there even though she fails to tell them anything. The only suspect is a vampire who happens to be nearby, so Sergeant 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 Anita finds that she may be dealing with a gang of vampires. Anita and her partner Manny infiltrate the vampires' base of operations, but find only a recently deceased corpse -- and when Anita returns to her office, she finds the assassin Edward, known absurdly as "Death," sitting in her chair.

Despite her hatred of Edward, Anita finds that she may need his help, since she's not getting any closer to finding the serial-killing vampires. And when she discovers a lead to the case, Anit and Manny head straight into a devastating trap, from which only "Death" himself may be able to rescue them...

A taut, thrilling mystery... "First Death" ain't. Laurell K. Hamilton just sort of halfheartedly slaps together a glacial, pointless plot with minimal detective work. In fact, she doesn't even bother to craft a NEW mystery -- she just embellishes a storyline that was summarized back in her first novel. Whoa, I wonder how this will turn out.

Even worse, Hamilton fritters most of the storyline away -- it's a disjointed string of crime scenes, zombie raisings, inept vampire-hunting, and really bad banter ("Blow a hole in them big enough, it slows them down pretty good"). Our intrepid heroine spends most of the plot sitting in a car, an office, or a strip club, and occasionally tackling a grieving mother to the ground (to show her concern, of course).

By the time we arrive at the climax, it feels like Hamilton realized that she's running out of space, and tried to cram the rest of the plot into the remaining pages. Torture, beatings and murder are glossed over in just a few pages, so it can finish on time.

And all this is just so Anita can meet Jean-Claude and Edward. Jean-Claude has nothing to do with the plot at all, so he just provides ruffled shirts and high-school flirtations -- he's as sexy and dangerous as a bowl of pudding. Edward is far better -- his easygoing-killer attitude seems even more likable besides Anita's humorless tough-grrlness. He tends to get the best lines, not to mention the great scene where he toasts a house.

Anita herself is a joke -- she seems more like a stunted, sulky Hot Topic teenager with too much makeup. Hamilton tries to portray her as a tough and powerful woman, but since Anita is repeatedly rescued by the Big Male Cop and Big Male Assassin, it's hard to see her that way. In fact, the most deadly thing she does in the whole story is stake a vampire who is unconscious and bound. Oooh, scary. I can see why the vampires as so frightened of her.

"The First Death" is a waste of time and paper -- a halfhearted crime story wrapped around an equally halfhearted pair of introductions. Definitely not worth a read.

I don't normally do graphic novels - but I'm a big fan of Laurell K Hamilton and almost anything Anita I will read. This was a nice treat as a prequal to the series. The art was good, the story good and the indexes in the back great. It's also nice to see how the characters "look" and see if they compare to my imagined image.

I have been a fan of the Anita Blake series ever since I first started on Guilty Pleasures and though I have been VERY disappointed with the recent offerings (pages of graphic sex but absolutely no storyline) and so I got veru excited when I finally managed to get my hands on this comic. I'm not a comic fan normally but for Anita I was willing to make an exception. The first volume was generally good, a hearkening back to the good old days when Anita was a properly developed character, rather than a whiny bicycle ( you know, everyone's had a ride). It showed us one of Anita's first cases with RPIT and a nice introduction to the characters of Zerbrowski and Dolph.
Unfortunately, the much-hyped first meeting between Jean-Claude and Anita leaves a lot to be desired. Jean-Claude is barely in the comic book at all and when he does make his appearance it seems to have little purpose or relevance to the storyline. But the flop of Jean-Claude aside the story carries on quite nicely to the second volume. Then they introduce Edward and for me that was where everything went wrong.
One of the key reasons I bought this comic was for that promised 'first' meeting between Anita and Edward. Then I read the comic and, people be warned, this is NOT their first meeting. By the time Edward appears in the comic it is established that he and Anita already know each other. It is not so different to his first appearance in the series - Guilty Pleasures and gives us no more information than we have already gleaned from the series thus far. Having been already very disappointed that this wasnt the epic first encounter between Anita and Edward that I have been promised, I also found myself incredibly disappointed in the comic depiction of Edward. The other characters in the comic seem to be drawn fairly faithfully to their novel counterparts. Edward is the exception. The artwork featuring him on the front cover, a very good and accurate rendition of the Edward described to us in Guilty Pleasures, is not the same artwork used to depict him inside the comic. Suddenly Edward, the unimposing, slender assassin, with his baby blues and good ol' boy smile becomes tall and muscular, dressed like something out of Van Helsing, with the sort of thick neck I haven't seen since John Smith in Disney's Pocahontas. Worst of all he seems to have a receding hairline, making him out to be much older than the novels imply he is. It is hard to connect with a character when the artist has so badly skewed off from the descriptions Laurell.K.Hamilton has provided us with. It was great to see him finally use his flamethrower but as to how he gets out to use it is left unclear. One moment he disappears under a crowd of vampires, the next he is setting fire to the house. Since it is Edward, I am assuming that he killed all the vampires but it would have been nice to see him in a little more action, especially since he seems to spend the rest of the comic talking.
All in all the comic is interesting as a read of one of Anita's early cases and a welcome reminder of the woman she used to be, but do not buy this book expecting some insightful first eocounter with either Jean-Claude or Edwardo or you will come away as I did - disappointed.

I love the books, but its really cool to look at the pictures of the characters. Really excellent artwork that makes the characters come alive.A+

I'm not a graphic novel person normally but I was curious about the story. I thought it was great classic Anita Blake. The graphics were fantastic. Although my personal vision of Jean Claude looks more like Johnny Depp.

More than Half is written guidebook for Gulity pleasures part one and There not nearlt enough story. Way to expensive for how little is really in there. Only worth buying for the most diehard fans if you just want to know what happens try and read it in store or at the library it's not worth buying
.

This was a summary of the book text, which I was hoping for something more, but the graphics were awesome.