The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 107: Daffodil #1, 2010

(Seems one of my posts on hentai comics from Eros Comix was mistakenly published yesterday. Good to see that the "Read More" cut worked, I guess!)

I'll give Marvel Comics the respect it deserves for making an effort to bring non-superhero comics from Europe to a wider audience. If there's one thing that really bothers me about the fandom surrounding comics in North America is that it's ridiculously superhero-centric. Now, let's be clear: the superhero is my favourite genre in any medium. But, as the old saw goes, the proliferation of the superhero in comics would be like all novels being romance novels, except that little tiny dusty corner in the back of Chapters.

This said, Daffodil isn't too far a stretch from Marvel's usual output. In fact, I could see Michael Morbius making a guest appearance. The story, as I'm understanding it, follows three agents of a vampire government who are tasked with keeping rogue members of their species from making too many waves and alerting the humans to their presence. Though some of the humans seem to already be aware of their presence. This is one of those things I've noticed about European comics, especially fantastic ones, that we aren't always given the exposition of the most basic elements of the fictional universe the way we are in superhero comics. It's not the world that's important, but the story, and that's a philosophy I can get behind. The better North American comics writers get this (yes, I'm thinking of Morrison, but also Hickman of late), but many suffer from what I call Claremontitis, the propensity to make sure that a reader doesn't have to do any thinking for themselves.

The art style here, executed with love and brutality by Giovanni Rigano, is like a mix of Disney princesses and Friday the 13th, and it really works well. Add to this the fact that the comic is 46 pages long, and you get some serious immersion in a bloody battle between vampires and vampires and humans raging through the streets of what I think is an Italian town. Oh, and there's two little kids who get caught up with the sexy vampire agents, but haven't, as yet, been eaten. And the agents are trying to stop Nosferatu, who has unleashed his vampires on this town in order to distract from his quest to free a....demon...vampire...something evil. A something evil that seems to be working with one of the humans.

Sigh. Yet another series that I think I'm going to have to track down. This project is starting to get expensive.

See you tomorrow.