Story and script: Rick Redmender
Story and layouts: Kieron Dwyer
Artist/Colorist: Salgood Sam
Vampire pirates, baby, vampire pirates! If those words make you happy, this is the comic book for you.
In 1533, the Spaniard Marco Esperanza finds himself shipwrecked and gasping for life in an unforgiving ocean. After five days of drifting, he’s found and brought aboard a mysterious vessel that seems to be inhabited by demons. It’s a pirate ship inhabited by vampires and even worse creatures. Esperanza gets settled aboard and reveals secrets about his family, but after a horrific battle, those terrible creatures set Espernza over the side, tied to part of the ship that had been sunk. But Esperanza has been turned into a vampire like the rest of the inhabitants of the pirate ship, and he doesn’t die. For over 470 years, Esperanza exists under the water, surviving on whatever fish come his way, until somehow, impossibly, he gets saved.
And then things get worse.
This an absolutely freaky comic book. Esperanza is an complete cold-blooded madman, and his evil is genuinely frightening. The bloodbath he leaves in his wake is terrifying (and a bit gratuitous, I thought, though this is after all a vampire comic), and there are some very scary creatures that come in at the end of the book. The art by Dwyer and Sam is awfully spooky, and the red, white and black pallette provides an eerie touch. But come on, this isn’t a comic book that requires deep analysis. It’s got freaking vampire pirates.
Yeah, vampire pirates. Spooky stuff.