Ah, vampires.
Once stinking cadaverous creatures-of-the-night, vampires are now sparkly-skinned day-walking sex symbols. Once evil and cruel, they’re now mopey and brooding at best or sensitive and 'misunderstood' at worst.
So who’s afraid of vampires anymore? I want you to be afraid again. Artist Matt Soffe and letterer Jim Campbell want you to be afraid again.
'A Pleasing Symmetry' is our offering.
The comic strip is placed in the proper Victorian setting (I say proper because, well, nothing beats the atmosphere of a Victorian Vampire story) and features characters that could very well find themselves right at home within the pages of Dracula. Be comforted, fans of Traditional Vampire stories: here you’ll find overgrown graveyards and dimly-lit alleyways, carriage chases and isolated towns nestled in the Carpathian Mountains.
But...
While the strip might have dug its way out of the same graveyard that plotted other Traditional Vampire stories, it’s not exactly a Traditional Vampire story. And indeed though the strip’s skeleton is provided by the Traditional Vampire story, the flesh that clings to the bone is altogether something different…
The creature in ‘A Pleasing Symmetry’ is certainly vampiric, if not an actual vampire. It's a sort of 'unliving energy mist' that feeds on the vitality of its victims. ‘What manner of creature is this?’ asks an aged priest to whom our main character responds: ‘Evil, in its purest form.’
This creature was never a man. It never had a soul. And most importantly it has never moped or brooded, nor does it have sparkly skin or a sexy smile.
The proceedings in ‘A Pleasing Symmetry’ are grim and bloody, the finale unremittingly nihilistic. Matt Soffe’s beautifully atmospheric artwork creates a landscape stripped bare by fear, where every tree is twisted and every road leads to death.
‘A Pleasing Symmetry’ will appear in Something Wicked 6 this coming October. Be afraid, be very afraid.
