American Vampire #34 (11x17)
Before I talk about this piece, let me say that in general it's been somewhat disparaging to see modern vampire-based movies and media simply oversaturate the market in recent years, given the quality of the generally poor source material and execution. However, when Scott Snyder & Rafael Albuquerque launched this creator-owned series back in 2010 - I had some hope after reading the first few issues, because it seemed like Snyder was genuinely trying to navigate around the mire of recent vampire-based material. Snyder's take on the vampire was an interesting one, both in terms of the characterization and the rich, accompanying tale he weaves around Skinner Sweet, the protagonist of the series. The historical aspect of the story that really appealed to me was the fact that the story spans several time periods starting in the 1880's and continuing into the 1920's, and it's been enjoyable seeing the characters and art move through the years.
Onto the art - it certainly doesn't hurt Snyder to have Albuquerque creating beautiful and terrifying designs for this book. I missed the first few covers from this series as most of them were purchased by a single collector, so I hadn't specifically been looking for covers from the book in the past few months. However after it was announced that the book was going on hiatus for a year with #34 being the final issue, I tried to hunt it down as I knew Albuquerque would have something special planned for this major turning point of the series. Thanks to Paolo, I was able to acquire not only the #34 cover but also an
alternate cover that was unused (it's also listed in this gallery).
