Bloody Mary by Nick Winn – BlackRaven Book Review

Silver Sprocket publishers had a sale. I looked up titles, found a few I wanted, and signed up for their monthly subscription for books. One of the books that came out of that mish-mash was called Bloody Mary by Nick Winn. It is a smidgen longer than a usual Zine, but it is more zine than what I consider a full-on graphic novel.

The first issue I had with it was that there are several moments where I felt like I started in the middle of the book or the middle of a series. There feels to be a lot of background missing (why are there vampires and humans together? Why do vampires look like they do? Who was the “big vampire” that turned people? Who are the girls that obviously are bullies of Mary’s past? And why is the old lady out that late at night?) The second issue I had was there was no color to the all black and white illustrations. Now, when we get to the gore part (and yes, there is a medium gory section, remember, vampires) it is good we didn’t have color (I don’t think the red blood all over would have set well with my chicken nugget dinner I had just finished eating). But having color in other places might have fleshed out the scenes.

What started off as somewhat interesting: Mary (having snuck out of the house) and new boyfriend, Evan are on their way to a movie, but Evan’s (vampire) cousin (who is driving them) needs to make a 10 second (Okay 10 minutes) stop at the local vampire club, Stake. (Good pun). We then have our lovers enter the club, get into some trouble, get the musical beat and start dancing, while Mary gets a literal change of heart about things. But there was never any “pop” this is cool and I like these people or I want to know more. Things were a slice of life, one episode in the bigger picture without the background to why things are the way they are.

I did not dislike this graphic novel by Winn. I might even read more by them and even more about Mary and Evan. But I am not saying I loved this book or even strongly liked it. It is an experience I had and it was decent. Others will have experiences that will be good or not specifically to them.

Took bottom image from the website for one of their merchandise stickers.