American Vampire

Since I’ve already read Interview with a Vampire I decided to read American Vampire by Scott Snyder and Stephen King. American Vampire had various interesting points that are very easily noteworthy. Considering storytelling and the development of characters, it seems that American Vampire did an outstandingly job of portraying and involving the audience. First and foremost American Vampire took creative liberties when dealing with the method in which they displayed their characters. Instead of having one protagonist and introducing supporting characters or a secondary protagonist the authors decided to have two protagonists and switch back and forth between stories. By doing so it creates for an interesting mix of emotions for the audience. It allows for the audience to sympathize with Skinner Sweet, just a down and dirty vampire and Pearl Jones, an innocent want to be actress, which eerily parallels with Anne Darrow from King Kong.  To expand on that I find myself sympathizing with Skinner Sweet because his character development was that of the western cowboy rebel who would steal from banks and fill the classic role of a cowboy rebel. I would find myself rooting for him because against all odds Sweet would always emerge victorious, of course after a few setbacks; but we all know that’s needed for good story development. Concerning Pearl Jones, the readers allowed to sympathize with her because she’s a very ambitious and caring woman who will do anything to meet her goal in life and survive. She’s the strong gothic woman that gets thrusted into a situation she would never find herself in and also come out victorious. Another interesting tid bit which sparked my interest was the fact that the book wasn’t a collaboration in the sense that Snyder and King worked on the story holistically, which in the beginning writings probably did just to get a basic outline for the story but rather Snyder would do one issue and King would do another one. So when put into the graphic novel medium I found it interesting the change of style and mood that I found myself going through as the reader and I found it clever that they made it work without continuity issues; the end piece was unified very nicely.