Comic Review: Vampire: The Masquerade Winter’s Teeth #1

Vampire: The Masquerade Winter’s Teeth #1

Vault Comics

Writer: Tim Seeley, Blake & Tini Howard

Art: Devmalya Pramanik, Nathan Gooden

Colors: Addison Duke

Letters: Andworld

Anyone who’s a fan of vampire movies, books, and whatnot probably remembers their reaction when first met with the world of Vampire: The Masquerade. Originally a TTRPG this world of bloodsuckers had incredibly well-built lore and social structure. This was the ultimate vampire storytelling with all kinds of vampires involved each with their own special abilities. VTM: Winter’s Teeth is Vault‘s contribution to this rich universe of darkness through the beautifully versatile medium that is comic books.

The comic actually presents us with two storylines. Winter’s Teeth follows Cecily Baine, an errand runner for the leader of the Twin Cities Camarilla, Prince Samantha Merrain. Baine mostly keeps to herself whenever not carrying Camarilla business. Cecily cares for her younger sister, Karen, who’s already an old lady and suffers from Alzheimer’s. Our protagonist is currently disputing whether to embrace her sister but stumbles upon a young girl who’s already been bitten, Alejandra. The secondary story, The Anarch Tales, follows a small band of vampires who live on the run from blood fix to blood fix but then start being followed by a band of vampire hunters.

Tim Seeley conducts the main story with tremendous talent. Seeley manages to give this new vampire story a similar tone to what VTM‘s franchise has established along the years on the first few pages of the book. The violent and dark start to the plot followed by the lonesome singing and narration Cecily presents is an immediate reminder of how much of a curse a vampire’s life can be. This and Cecily’s smart decision to not meddle to deep in Camarilla business make for a compelling character as she’s a vampire making her unliving as she must, in order to protect the last fragment of humanity she clings to her sister. Blake and Tini Howard write the secondary storyline and do so quite nicely. They adopt a similar kind of narration storytelling but verging a bit on the opposite of what Seeley does.

Devmalya Pramanik’s work on the main storyline is sublime from the start. The artist focuses a lot on detailing and shading elements in a specific way to convey the object’s texture precisely. His movement depiction is equally mesmerizing. Nathan Gooden’s work on The Anarch Tales is a nice contrast to Pramanik’s. The artist takes advantage of simpler elements in the background and giving more attention to cloth and hair detailing.

Addison Duke colors both stories in the comic book and that says a lot about the work on its own. To skillfully put color in two completely different art styles that go in the same book is always commendable. Duke makes every panel seem naturally lit which always helps with immersions and puts differently shaded filters in the stories either to immediately convey a flashback or an enraged vampire attack of Alejandra’s. The lettering is taken care of by Andworld and it is a solid job leaning towards more classic approaches such as different shaped bubbles for dialogues coming from cellphones.

The Vampire: The Masquerade universe has hit the comic book medium and it has hit hard. The first issue cautiously sets up a mystery that is doomed to unveil amidst a lot of blood. The art is composed by a talented team that is making the best of bringing the aesthetics of VTM‘s urban fantasy into comics. This is an easy recommendation from me and a series I intend to follow.