I've already reviewed a few graphic novels from superhero publishers Marvel and DC that were published in their Marvel Graphic Novel and DC Graphic Novel by lines that ran from 1982 to 1993 and 1983 to 1986 respectively. It still boggles my mind that they conjured up such generic names for lines that existed only to publish material that didn't revolve around superheroes, but that may highlight how little they cared about them. After all, they were never going to sell enough copies to even approach being comparable to their famous superhero titles.

Anyway, here's another one, Marvel Graphic Novel No. 20, because it's in the stack that Edward lent me to read and review for this project and it's another book written by John M. DeMatteis, whose 'Brooklyn Dreams' series I've just wrapped up and whose 'Moonshadow' still haunts me. It's a very different book on the surface, but it covers some of the same ground, having a lot to say about the process of creation, featuring neurotic Jewish characters and making strong use of flashbacks to deepen characters.

As you might imagine, this one's about a vampire whose name is Greenberg—Oscar Greenberg—and he's one of those neurotic Jewish characters. However, it really doesn't matter too much that he's a vampire and this certainly doesn't unfold the way we tend to expect vampire stories to unfold. It's just a way to explain a few quirks in his character and set up a few moments for an array of other characters to react to. He isn't even either of the bad guys, though I wouldn't call him the good guy either. He's just the pivotal character at the heart of the story.

He's a writer, the king of horror fiction, suggesting the obvious comparison to real life. He was researching a satanic cult for another horror novel when he met Denise Keaton, hit it off, fell into the sack and got bitten a little too much in the heat of passion. So now he's a vampire and he writes at night. Some of the vampire tropes are true: he has big incisors, he has a thirst for blood and he can turn into a bat. Others are false: he can eat regular food, he's able to see his reflection and he doesn't vant to drink your blood. After all, his brother runs a butcher's shop, so he has all the animal blood he could ever need.

He's also in a solid relationship because he and Denise truly care about each other. Vampires have feelings and emotions and are often highly spiritual. They're just a little different, as his brother finds when he tracks him down at a vampire party and feels wildly out of place. As the book came out in 1986, it could easily have drifted into urban fantasy, exploring how vampires live alongside us without the need to focus on horror. Had it been a decade later, after 'Guilty Pleasures', maybe Oscar and Denise and their vampire buddies would be out to the public and maybe even have legal status. However, it isn't so they aren't and they stay in the shadows.

In fact, Oscar, as a public figure, has become known as a recluse. Nobody's seen him in ten years and a journalist believes that snapping his picture will guarantee him a good pay day. Denise is carefully right there to accidentally on purpose break his camera, of course, and save the day. They're a team. Instead, the public knows him now only through his books, but a lot of the focus is on the fact that he can't write any more. He still has the drive and he keeps starting things, like 'The Confessions of a Vampire', the opening pages of which serve as background material here, but he discards them all. When we see the beginning of 'The Second Book of Genesis', we see why. That attempted science fiction novel is outrageously bad.

By "nobody", of course, I mean the public. Oscar has come out to everyone in his family except Nana, the matriarch of the family, Henrietta Greenberg, who's ninety-five. Ira the butcher gets him whatever animal blood he needs to quench his thirst. His nephew Morrie lives with him and generally doesn't see a problem with that. Their relationships are all brother/brother or uncle/nephew instead of the traditional vampire/servant. In fact, none of the traditional hierarchical command structure is here. Denise was Oscar's creator but she doesn't manipulate him or even control him, just loves him. There aren't any Renfields here eating flies or chewing the scenery. Vampires are regular folk, just dead ones who haven't stopped moving yet.

And so this would become a slice of undeath story, all about Oscar's writer's block and Morrie's longing for a co-worker and maybe the feature film that Paradise Pictures wants to make of an Oscar Greenberg novel, 'The Blood of Mrs. Morris', hopefully with him writing the script. What stops that is the traditional horror story that kicks off the book, a woman in New York opening her garbage can to find a severed head inside. It's the work of what the papers are calling "The New York Ripper" who we promptly meet on a page that ends with the introduction of Oscar.

The New York Ripper doesn't look like an outrageous serial killer and he isn't at all happy to be one but he was made that way by a beautiful young redhead soaking naked in a bathtub while he scrubs the blood off his hands. He isn't Oscar, but I thought he was for quite a while and, at a crucial point when Morrie's date is murdered by the Ripper, he thinks he is too. And all this has the effect of weakening resistance so that that beautiful young redhead can do what she does and that's where the rest of the story comes from.

I should mention here that DeMatteis treats women rather inconsistently here, which is a good thing. That beautiful young redhead is the villain of the piece, the man she's manipulated into being the New York Ripper completely under her control. She's an immensely strong character. So's Nana, even though she's ninety-five years old. She knows more than anyone thinks and she has more balls than any of the male characters. However, Denise, who's occupying the role that would normally be the immensely strong character, is soft and supportive, almost a traditional female role in a thoroughly untraditional story. Of course, she has strength too, being vampire, but she doesn't manifest it unless she needs to.

I enjoyed 'Greenberg the Vampire' but it's a shorter and less substantial read than 'Brooklyn Dreams' and far from the magnum opus that 'Moonshadow' constitutes. It almost feels like a John M. DeMatteis starter volume to give you an idea about what makes him tick and what he would dive far deeper into in books like 'Brooklyn Dreams' and 'Moonshadow', which suddenly feels like it appeared far too early in his career. That started publication in comic book form in 1985, when he wrote this, and was halfway through its three-year run when this was published. Yet this feels like a beginning and that feels more like an end, the sort of book that arrives at the culmination of a career. That both appear to be pet projects feels wrong somehow.

In fact, the worst thing about this could be the fact that it's called 'Greenberg the Vampire'. It suggests that it's a vampire comic, which it really isn't. The Frog Brothers wouldn't hand it out to newcomers to Santa Carla to teach them how to deal with the undead. Sure, it has vampires in it and one of them is called Greenberg, but it's a lot more about Greenberg the Writer than it is Greenberg the Vampire. The cover art is highly appropriate, because it shows him looking like a regular human being shooting his typewriter. Only as we explore that art closer does the supernatural weirdness at the top of the page start to stand out.

And that really flavours how this is going to play to readers. If they go in looking for a vampire comic, they're likely to be disappointed. I rather like this take on vampire tropes and culture, a thoroughly everyday approach to the subject refreshing. However, vampire fans would want to see a lot more of that and it just isn't the point of the book. It works much better as a graphic novel in the generic sense that Marvel seemed to see it: a story told in sequential art that had nothing to do with superheroes and therefore wouldn't sell to the same crowd.

Instead, it might sell to fans of literature who were beginning to see sequential art as a viable medium for deeper and more adult stories, such as 'Watchmen' and 'The Dark Knight Returns', both of which were also released in 1986. In a sense, it's even truer to that mindset because it's entirely free of superheroes. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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