Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

Blood and Water

By Andy Frisk
November 18, 2009 - 19:17

Adam Heller had a great life. In High School he was class president, a “state ranked sprinter on the track team,” and he had a pretty girlfriend. The only drawback was that he had chronic Hepatitis B which he contracted from his injection drug using mother at birth. Shortly after his twentieth birthday he contracted Hepatitis A as the result of a choice he made, which in turn caused the tumor that is going to end up killing him very soon. Adam is a lucky man though. He has two very close and caring friends who present him with an option. It’s an option that, unbeknownst to Joshua and Nicole (who “every body calls Nicky”), will have devastating consequences. Adam is a good man though, and a dear friend, but only he can make the choice to accept Joshua and Nicky’s offer. All he has to do is drink their blood…but he already has the blood of something far more dangerous running through his veins.

Blood and Water by Judd Winick, with art by Tomm Coker, and published by DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint, at first glance might look like another in a long line of overdone and overrated vampire stories. It’s not. Originally published as a five part mini series in 2003, Blood and Water slightly predates the explosion of popularity that vampire mythology is currently experiencing in Hollywood and in popular culture in general. Like the most popular vampire story currently sweeping bookstores and multiplexes, The Twilight Saga, Blood and Water has romance, action, elation, sorrow, and loss, as well as understanding. What it decidedly doesn’t have is the overwhelming and quite frankly annoying, teenage melodrama. As the story of a young man who faces his own death, the death of a friend who is more like his brother, the mind boggling prospect of immortality, and finally, the differing and at times mutable definition of what a family is (hence the title), Blood and Water is one of the most intelligent, as well as hip, uses of the popular vampire mythos to thoughtfully explore human themes that everyday mortals must face day in and day out.

Blood and Water has all the hallmarks of most pop culture vampire tales. There’s plenty of sex (PG-13 and mild R rated), plenty of bad language (definitely R rated), plenty of sleek, hipster goth outfits (comprised of leather jackets for the guys and leather boots, baby T’s, and halter tops for the girls, all of which are black of course, with plenty of shades for everyone), a good deal of superhuman strength and flight, and, of course, plenty of blood drinking. Vampires in this universe don’t indulge in human blood though, as those who do become mindless addicts who are eventually put down by The Taveen. The Taveen are “kind of like the royal guard of the vampire race.” They basically keep the world’s population of vampires safe (mostly from each other), exterminate human blood addict vampires who are misbehaving, and essentially kill evil vampires. When it’s discovered that Joshua and Nicky’s making of Adam into a vampire has awakened the dormant and most dangerous  members of the vampire race, The Tribe, (Adam is a human decendent of one of the Tribe's abandoned children) even The Taveen are unable to stop the oncoming destruction.

Here is where Blood and Water rises above the vampire fiction of its kind, and transcends into a story with allegorical importance rather than descending into a flashy, all style and no substance best seller. The question of family, spiritual and biological isn’t an easily answerable question. Biology makes us what we are physically, just like Adam’s DNA makes him Tribe, but the familial love between the three defines what Adam does. Biology makes Adam a member of the cannibalistic and murderous Tribe, but consciousness, spirit, cognizance, love, or whatever you want to call it, is what drives Adam’s actions. Or do they? Tribe kill their own kind. Adam kills Joshua, in a roundabout way and certainly not wittingly, but Joshua’s death is a result of Adam’s actions, which are rooted in an aspect of Adam’s weakness to self indulgence, a trait that Tribe suffer from. So therefore, Adam’s actions kill his brother, and this is what Tribe does. So does Adam’s biology then, in this case, motivate Adam’s actions? Adam does stop the Tribe’s awakened remnant, declaring “I am NOTHING like YOU!!!” saving vampire and human kind from their murderous return. These actions are motivated by his spiritual love of his fallen brother Joshua and his now friend, and possibly future lover, Nicky. So perhaps Adam’s spirit shares dominance over his actions with his biology? These are not easily answerable questions, like most nature vs. nurture questions aren’t. Blood and Water is allegorically pondering the same quandaries that everyday readers might have about the motivations behind their actions. Winick does a great job putting forth the question and letting the reader answer it to a point, like great writers do.

A graphic novel cannot survive on good writing alone. It must have great art as well. Tomm Coker, fortunately for the reader, is a great artist who brings to life Winick’s tale with all the requisite darkness and gothic overtones an urban vampire story calls for, without resorting to cliché or overdoing the goth aspects of pop culture styles of dress and fashion over-indulgence. He creates very real looking characters who are well proportioned and could be mistaken for anyone on the streets of any large city. The city is also realistically rendered. Coke does display a flair for the imaginative as well though when the script calls for it. The hallucinations that Adam experiences as he transforms from human to vampire are aptly horrific and well imagined by Coker, as are the hideously twisted and animalistic physiology of the Tribe members. Topping it all off are Jason Wright’s colors. He manages to create a dark atmosphere with plenty of black and shadows, but also masterfully plays purples, violets, greens, yellows, and oranges off of his blacks to create great blending contrasts.

Overall, Blood and Water ranks as one of best works of vampire fiction ever produced in popular form, and definitely ever produced in sequential art form. It’s a prime example of what the vampire mythos, if used properly, can produce: great stories. Nothing less is expected from Vertigo’s venerable line of mature comic books. Winick creates a vampire story that rises above the tired genre of nighttime bloodsuckers and doesn’t (pardon the pun) suck. If any vampire tale deserves movie treatment, Blood and Water is one. It’s also one that is ripe for sequels, as it already has its own built in vampire mythos. Maybe one day we’ll be lucky enough to get some...

Rating: 10 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12