When White-Wolf issued a press release in mid-September announcing the forthcoming publication of stand-alone graphic novels set in the World of Darkness, I was both excited and apprehensive. As both a fan of comics and White Wolf, the idea of World of Darkness comics appealed to me. But I care enough for the well-being of White Wolf that I worry when they venture into different media. Their forays into the realms of television, novels, and computer gaming are generally hit-and-miss (I was disappointed by Vampire: Redemption but am one of those few who liked Kindred: The Embraced) and what comic-style work I’d already seen from them (in Aberrant and Werewolf) wasn’t good enough to be more than supplementary fiction.
It is with great pleasure that I can say that my fears were misplaced. Graphic Novel: Toreador is a success. I mean that it is successful as a story. Whether or not it will be profitable has yet to be seen. But White Wolf made a wise decision in giving independent licensing partner Moonstone (http://www.moonstonebooks.com/) the responsibility of turning these stories out.
The first thing that you’ll notice about Toreador is the price; at $5.95, you may find yourself balking. Don’t let it stop you. At forty-eight pages of quality storytelling, without a single page of advertisements, and only published on a quarterly basis, six bucks is a bargain. Most normal comics are priced at about $2.95 and run twenty-four pages. It’s like you’re buying two comics at a normal price, with storytelling of four times the quality.
Have I mentioned the quality of the storytelling? Let me do so again: It’s good. Writer Rafael Nieves and the rest of the Moonstone crew obviously have love and respect for the vision of the World of Darkness, and the maturity to stay true to that vision. It’s justifiable to worry that a World of Darkness vampire comic would cater to the worst interpretations of the setting, with page after page of black-trenchcoated katana-wielding combat-goobers firing phosphorous rounds at each other in rooftop chases. To the contrary, the setting of Toreador is what it should be: superficially indistinguishable from our own.
And that’s just the setting. The story itself is smart and stylish. Writing for the vampire genre holds the risk of over-affected melodrama, with lots of “Woe is me!” and “I am a dark and spooky predator! Hiss! Hiss!” and other over-the-top exorbitance. Not so Toreador. The dialogue is natural and clever without becoming pretentious. It neither insults the readers, nor assumes that they are classical scholars. As for the vampires, they have the good sense to move and talk and dress as normal people (which is the whole point of the Masquerade, if I’m not mistaken).
The plot is well-structured and accomplishes a lot. One of moonstone’s objectives is to make their books easily-accessible to the general public, and Nieves handles the challenge of introducing readers to the setting of Vampire without letting the exposition get bogged down in the immense detail that is the trademark of the World of Darkness. The plot is driven, not by action, but by interaction; a pleasant deviation from the usual fist-fighting and stuff-exploding fare you find in comics. Thirty pages of the book are threaded together by continuous conversation between the two main characters, one of them a human who pretends to be a vampire, the other a vampire pretending to be human. And it never gets dull.
Following on that note about the main characters is another element of the story which gets mentioned a lot in White Wolf stuff, but isn’t always put into practice: theme. Toreador has a point, an idea that unites the story and gives it meaning. The theme of the story is evident in its title (All the World’s a Stage) and the dialogue (much of the conversation is about masks, roles, and performances, which also makes it appropriate to the well-chosen title clan). The theme of the story is the oft-overlooked Masquerade. It is a story about pretending to be something you are not.
As for Vince Locke’s art (which I’ve neglected to mention), it is exactly what it should be, illustrative, without being distracting. It lacks a bit in mood—the world as presented in the book looks more real-world than gothic-punk—but that’s as much a strength as a weakness. Horror is more stimulating when the streets look like ones you’ve walked down and the people look like you could run into them on the bus; no big breasts or broad muscles. There are also little visual details, like the ad on the side of a bus, the image of a sun on a wine bottle’s label, and a close-up on a lit match, that serve as visual counterpoints to the story. Pictures and words work together in good comics, as they do here.
There are other details that are also worth praising. Some of the lines are tips of the hat to the roots of the setting: “Me? I tell stories.” “You’re a writer?” “A storyteller.” as well as “But what role would I play?” The opening of the story is well-conceived: we start with a black-and-white sequence from a mid-50s vampire flick, and then pull back from the television screen and into the real world, instantly informing us that the vampires we will run into the story are not the cliched vampires of the silver screen.
Overall, for the first entry in the series, an excellent book. I don’t think that the events in this series will have any impact on the World of Darkness metaplot, but its worth picking up anyway. If you like the World of Darkness and you like comics, do give this one a try.
Go to forum!
(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)