Dampyr #032 (2002) 'Insatiable'

This Italian supernatural adventure series has a lot of conceptual overlap with Blade and Vampire Hunter D by way of John Constantine and Doctor Who. Harlan Draka is a sort of super-hero in plain clothes. He's a "Dampyr," the half-vampire son of a vampire lord. His blood is poison to vampires, so he coats his weapons with it.

In isolation this story could have easily been one of the many pulpy "monster of the month" stories that pepper the Dampyr catalogue. But as it turned out later, it introduces both an ongoing villain and a crucial ongoing secondary character, making it indispensable for understanding the overall Dampyr canon.

Many issues of Dampyr use horror tropes to explore social ills. This story deals with abusive capitalism, as exemplified by events at a Swiss factory town dominated by a meat processing plant. The story was inspired by reports of the exploitation of illegal immigrants fleeing wars in Africa and Eastern Europe. Here, they literally become fresh meat, in a story that mixes cannibalism and Lovecraftian monsters. The title translates as a noun, “The Insatiable Ones,” but I have rendered it as an adjective.