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Blood Feud #3
Released by: Oni Press
Released on: December 23rd, 2015.
Written by: Cullen Bunn
Illustrated by: Drew Moss, Nick Filardi
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Spiders! And lots of them. They're heading towards the farm house where the hounds are on the porch just completely losing it, the way that dogs lose it when they now that there's danger. But it's all in vain; those dogs are just plain outnumbered. They never stood a chance, poor buggers. Inside the house, things are no better. R.F. Coven, Cecil Burnett, Jack Siever and Sue Hatchell are face to face with the vampire that used to be their friend Seth Stubbs. A few shots send the beast crashing out the window and into the woods nearby, but it's clearly not dead.
And what else was outside? Those spiders. They're responding to Seth's strange noises, carpeting him and making their way into the house as Seth tells them that the master is 'brings eternal life.' The spiders, some normally fairly passive tarantulas, start to bite, to attack, but as nasty as those eight legged sonsofbitches are, they are still spiders and spiders can still be squashed. But just as it's looking like they might get out, Seth attacks Cecil, Jack gets bitten, Seth gets staked. They bloody fray sends the spiders scampering back into the night and, temporarily at least, there is calm.
Cecil isn't coming back. The phones are dead, the surviving three can't call the cops. They get into the truck and they drive, to where they don't seem to know but they can't stay at Cecil's old place. And Jack, well, he was bitten by Seth. So they head back towards town…
This third chapter is a much darker installment than the two that came before it but that same small town, quirky charm that Bunn's writing brings to these dark situations with such charm is still a big part of what makes Blood Feud more than just another vampire comic. Really, we need more vampire comics like we need more zombie comics but Bunn's writing is great and this is definitely worth checking out. The lead characters well defined, each with their own personality, while the invasion that makes up the first half of this issue is actually genuinely frightening in both concept and execution. Obviously, with more story left to be told, this issue asks more questions than it answers but all signs point to big things to come.
Drew Moss and Nick Filardi continue to do great things in the art department. Action is conveyed well and some of the panel layouts, especially when the spiders start coming into the farmhouse, are appropriately and effectively claustrophobic. The vampire characters look as savage as they should given that they behave the way that they behave here (these aren't the classy vampires of Universal or Hammer horror) and they make for impressively dark foes.
The story is getting better, darker, more interesting while the art has been quirky and fun and interesting from the start. Blood Feud, for those reasons, is worth the time of anyone who can appreciate a good backwoods horror story and like a good comic should, it leaves us wanting more.
