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A review by easolinas
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures: Ultimate Collection by Stacie Ritchie, Laurell K. Hamilton
1.0
Once upon a time, before the Anita Blake series became cheap porn with well-endowed vampires and werethingies, there was "Guilty Pleasures." And like many a successful fantasy/horror novel before it, Laurell K. Hamilton's breakout story has been adapted into graphic novel form -- the complete "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures," with its surly inept heroine and indifferent artwork.
The story: Anita Blake is a vampire hunter and an animator, able to raise zombies from the dead. She also isn't too fond of vampires or weres, though St. Louis is swarming with them. So when a vampire comes to hire her, she turns him down. But at a bachelorette party, she soon finds herself hip-deep in vampire politics -- and a dangerous enemy who is trying to kill her. Things only get more complicated when she ends up facing the Master of the City, the deceptively childlike Nikolaos, and a dungeon full of wererats.
Her new goal: find who is offing vampires in St. Louis, possibly with the help of the seductive poet-shirt-wearing Jean-Claude. Despite discovering who the vampire murderer is, she immediately forgets the bad guy's identity and goes hunting through St. Louis' population -- Humans Against Vampires, the Church of Eternal Life, and other such. Since the plot is going nowhere, Nikolaos becomes impatient and gives Anita a little gruesome motivation -- and to stop both the vampire killer and the Master, Anita must team up with some unlikely allies.
"Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures" is a comic book that sometimes boggles the mind. It's hard to take a mystery novel seriously if the hero forgets who the villain is, and can't figure out what's going on unless the Evil Vampire Killer inexplicably unmasks himself. Laurell K. Hamilton's plot is just sort of oozing along, with plot developments and fights thrown in at random whenever things threaten to get REALLY boring.
Along the way, Hamilton tries to pad the story by having Anita run around blaming people at random. So she splatters torture, shootouts, nudity, tepidly erotic zombie-raising, and a big silly knife fight at the climax. To make matters worse, Hamilton's dialogue has the razor wit of kindergarten trash talk ("Thus he must die." "No!" "Oh, but yes!"). And by the end, the plot has completely unravelled -- the nadir is a truly hysterical conversation about zombie sexual abuse. Yeah, we totally needed that.
Brett Booth's artwork does not help either -- Anita looks like a parody picture of Angelina Jolie, with albino skin, ridiculously flowing curly hair that extends a good six inches in front of her face, and a case of massive thunder thighs (one woman's thighs are each bigger than her waist). Perhaps as a reflection of Booth's mood, Anita always looks bored. The other characters don't fare well either -- Jean Claude looks like an effeminate male doppelganger of Anita, Edward looks pervy, and Nikolaos looks like a Disney heroine surrounded by flying toilet paper.
But Anita herself is the weakest part of the plot: abrasive, smug, brittle and rather weak, as well as a total failure as a detective or a vampire hunter. Hamilton pretty clearly considers her a hardcore tough-grrl, but smirking, cowering and giving in to the bad guys does not make you tough. Even worse, she has the tiny immovable mind of the very stupid and stubborn -- when she decides someone is guilty, they must be guilty.
Most of the other characters are 2-D villains -- the cackling Nikolaos (think Anne Rice's Claudia), the tepidly Machievellian Jean Claude (he wears a POET'S SHIRT), the uninterestingly nasty Theresa, cheesy masked pedophile Valentine, and the mewling vampire addict Philip. The interesting people are also the ones that we spend the least time on -- the casual assassin Edward, the capable and intelligent Ronnie, and the king of the wererats.
The complete "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures" is one of those graphic novels that drags on and on with little to keep you reading -- indifferent art, an obnoxiously dumb heroine, and a meandering plot.
The story: Anita Blake is a vampire hunter and an animator, able to raise zombies from the dead. She also isn't too fond of vampires or weres, though St. Louis is swarming with them. So when a vampire comes to hire her, she turns him down. But at a bachelorette party, she soon finds herself hip-deep in vampire politics -- and a dangerous enemy who is trying to kill her. Things only get more complicated when she ends up facing the Master of the City, the deceptively childlike Nikolaos, and a dungeon full of wererats.
Her new goal: find who is offing vampires in St. Louis, possibly with the help of the seductive poet-shirt-wearing Jean-Claude. Despite discovering who the vampire murderer is, she immediately forgets the bad guy's identity and goes hunting through St. Louis' population -- Humans Against Vampires, the Church of Eternal Life, and other such. Since the plot is going nowhere, Nikolaos becomes impatient and gives Anita a little gruesome motivation -- and to stop both the vampire killer and the Master, Anita must team up with some unlikely allies.
"Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures" is a comic book that sometimes boggles the mind. It's hard to take a mystery novel seriously if the hero forgets who the villain is, and can't figure out what's going on unless the Evil Vampire Killer inexplicably unmasks himself. Laurell K. Hamilton's plot is just sort of oozing along, with plot developments and fights thrown in at random whenever things threaten to get REALLY boring.
Along the way, Hamilton tries to pad the story by having Anita run around blaming people at random. So she splatters torture, shootouts, nudity, tepidly erotic zombie-raising, and a big silly knife fight at the climax. To make matters worse, Hamilton's dialogue has the razor wit of kindergarten trash talk ("Thus he must die." "No!" "Oh, but yes!"). And by the end, the plot has completely unravelled -- the nadir is a truly hysterical conversation about zombie sexual abuse. Yeah, we totally needed that.
Brett Booth's artwork does not help either -- Anita looks like a parody picture of Angelina Jolie, with albino skin, ridiculously flowing curly hair that extends a good six inches in front of her face, and a case of massive thunder thighs (one woman's thighs are each bigger than her waist). Perhaps as a reflection of Booth's mood, Anita always looks bored. The other characters don't fare well either -- Jean Claude looks like an effeminate male doppelganger of Anita, Edward looks pervy, and Nikolaos looks like a Disney heroine surrounded by flying toilet paper.
But Anita herself is the weakest part of the plot: abrasive, smug, brittle and rather weak, as well as a total failure as a detective or a vampire hunter. Hamilton pretty clearly considers her a hardcore tough-grrl, but smirking, cowering and giving in to the bad guys does not make you tough. Even worse, she has the tiny immovable mind of the very stupid and stubborn -- when she decides someone is guilty, they must be guilty.
Most of the other characters are 2-D villains -- the cackling Nikolaos (think Anne Rice's Claudia), the tepidly Machievellian Jean Claude (he wears a POET'S SHIRT), the uninterestingly nasty Theresa, cheesy masked pedophile Valentine, and the mewling vampire addict Philip. The interesting people are also the ones that we spend the least time on -- the casual assassin Edward, the capable and intelligent Ronnie, and the king of the wererats.
The complete "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures" is one of those graphic novels that drags on and on with little to keep you reading -- indifferent art, an obnoxiously dumb heroine, and a meandering plot.