Vampire The Masquerade: Toreador, subtitled “All The World’s A Stage”, is the first in a series of tie-in comics for White Wolf’s World of Darkness setting. Rafael Nieves, known for his work on Marvel's Hellstorm, and Vince Locke, White Wolf and comics artist, introduce readers to the setting in time-honoured fashion, by having an unreliable narrator tell the vampires’ creation story to a potential victim.
Following a seven-page ‘prologue’ depicting the final few minutes of a tacky vampire B-movie, used here to contrast the ‘reality’ of the Vampire setting, we meet Jane Fordham, our POV character, an obscure actress playing wildly-popular horror hostess Fannie Fang. When not playing that role, she’s down to earth, publicity-shy, and doesn’t have any time for vampires.
Despite this, she meets a ‘storyteller’ called Victor, apparently a would-be producer, in a bar. Victor tells her, and so the reader, a new version of the setting’s origin of the undead, the story of Caine, and his children and their children, the vampire clans. The tale has been told and retold many times in the Vampire game line and related fiction, but this summary is quite neatly done, the pages on Caine himself including some narration ripe for borrowing by Vampire Storytellers.
She apparently figures out that he’s talking about vampires as they are on their way back to his place, a good nine pages after the first obvious reference, and three pages after the suggestion that the Children of Caine are “allergic to sunlight”. She seems rather slow on the uptake..
What happens in the frame story after the narrative concludes isn’t terribly surprising, in all honesty. Jane is quite likeable, apart from seeming dense above, being by turns cynical, gloomy and wry. Victor is essentially an outlet for the story, so he remains somewhat of a cipher throughout. The interplay between them thus feels like a sarcastic reader’s commentary with an academic writer, rather than the beginnings of any further relationship.
An epilogue brings in Victoria Ash, the clan’s Signature Character, the only indication that this story has anything to do with Clan Toreador in particular, and then only to those already familiar with the setting. She basically says hello and concludes the story on a pun, and her entire appearance feels unnecessary.
While Moonstone call this a graphic novel, and in terms of production it is square bound and glossy, it is in content more a short story. Including the Ash page, we have twenty-four pages of Jane’s story, seventeen of Caine and his Children, and seven of the ‘prologue’. This leaves the actual story feeling rather rushed. The prologue could have been shorter, although in artistic terms it is definitely the highlight of the book.
Locke’s art serves the story for most of its length, occasionally being allowed to shine alone as here, and notably in the prologue, rendered in painterly monochrome rather than the computer-coloured inks of the ‘real world’. A page that gives a single panel to each of five clans conforms to stereotype, disappointingly. The Ventrue are all neat haircuts and suits, the Gangrel are outdoorsy, the Brujah both look young and tough, the Nosferatu are ugly (but not nearly enough), and worst of all one of the Malkavians holds a lollipop while another wears clown makeup and a T-shirt with a cartoon animal design.
The colours provided by Paul Mounts are generally fine, although a supposed Toreador demonstrates the red eyes that are almost wholly exclusive to the Gangrel. D’oh.
Ken Meyer Jr. provides a painted cover which makes Fannie look cute and Jane look sinister.
Nieves’s story contains several knowing nods to roleplaying, storytelling, and the conventions of Vampire specifically. As an introduction to the setting, it works passably. As a comic, it contains far more talking-heads scenes than is wise. As a comic about Clan Toreador specifically, it very effectively stresses the current Vampire developer’s stance that clans aren’t that important. Unfortunately, Moonstone plan to release an issue like this for each of the clans, so leading off with a story in which clan is totally insignificant strikes me as odd.
In all, Vampire The Masquerade: Toreador serves as a fair introduction to the setting, a source of ideas for discussions on the origins of vampires, and the art is good when not restricted to talking heads. However, it badly shortchanges the clan purported to be its main subject. Its main value to Vampire Storytellers is to give it to new players as a primer.
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