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Vampires Need Love Too #4      Now Available! $3

It’s always a good sign when I have trouble picking out a sample from a comic of one page strips. I generally try to pick a page that I think is funny, and when it’s an easy choice that means that there weren’t all that many laughs. This time around I could have picked a half dozen strips pretty easily. The basic setup is probably familiar to you by now, especially if you’ve been keeping up with this series: it’s all about a vampire and his crew of freakish friends. Brian posts one strip a week on Sundays, and it looks like they vary between this and some of his other series. If you wonder how many series the guy has going, check out the online store, as most of them are for sale here. Anyway, strips in here include his friend the bat and its problems, the lizard with the strange accent offering him advice, accidentally turning a girl into a vampire, the usefulness of having “divine” protection, and his troubles with ladies. Lot of strips are about his troubles with the ladies, actually, and he gets in more than a few good lines in the process. Well, he does if you’re a guy who has trouble understanding what is going on in any given woman’s head, but your opinion may vary if you actually are one of those ladies. Either way, there’s no quicker way to make funny stuff unfunny than by going through each strip in detail, so I’ll leave that sort of thing to the readers. If you liked his previous issues in this series, Brian is only getting funnier. If you haven’t liked the previous issues, you should maybe give this one in particular a try; I think you might like what you see.

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Vampires Need Love Too #3 Now Available!  $3

Do you people still scroll all the way down this page when I mention the updates?  Brian is going to change the way these pages are set up all by himself if he keeps this up.  And, seeing as how he’s been sending me these comics for most of the life of the site at this point, I don’t see him slowing down any time soon.  This comic, like the last two, is comprised of daily strips, so the story kind of comes and goes.  At times he seems to be focusing on a larger piece, then it stops abruptly and veers off in a different direction.  There are still a few funny bits and a few groaners (nature of the beast with the pun-oriented strips), but the funny does outweigh the groaners and I like the new zombie roommate.  Subjects in here include having the Grim Reaper as a friend, moaning about a lack of love life, a stoner/drunk turned into a zombie and his friends being unable to tell the difference (that one was a bit heavy-handed), being in a blues band, what’s really in your coffee, the difficulty of giving death gifts, stalking vs. courting, and being stuck with a vampire stereotype.  I should also mention (in case I never have on this vast page) that Brian has been getting other artists to do representation of his characters for a while now, and this time around gets Graham Annable and Matt Metzler to do some damned impressive work.  Check out the pile of free samples on his website if you need convincing, and it’s linked way up at the top of the page.  $3

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Vampires Need Love Too! #2 Now Available! $3

I seemed to be mildly confused in the review for the last issue as to why so many of the pages seemed to end in bad puns, and in retrospect it’s simple enough: these were done as daily online strips, one page each. Naturally that means there has to be some sort of payoff on each page, and this is where my traditional dislike for the four panel strip comes in. Luckily this issue tells a decent enough story on its own. It’s still all about this sad vampire wandering around, trying to find love, and this issue also has said vampire running into a variety of zombies, the bat and lizard from the previous issue, a brief girlfriend resulting from a blind date (more about this momentarily), a new pet, and Death. This brief girlfriend had a few moments where it seemed like pages were missing, I guess because this book doesn’t print all of the online strips, maybe because some of them didn’t make the cut, or maybe they just refer to things that happen off-panel. Comics can be tricky that way. OK, thanks to the wonders of the internets I was able to just go over to Brian’s website and it looks like plenty of the pages in this book aren’t even posted there, so the missing pages will remain a mystery. By now you’ve seen enough of Brian’s work on this page alone to know if you like the guy, if so, you’re sure to love this one too. If you’re undecided, maybe start with a little Zeek or check out the website first, you know the drill. $3

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Vampires Need Love Too! #1 Now Available! $2.50

It looks like Brian has graduated from the world of tiny, tiny comics into the world of “regular” sized mini comics. I’m not sure what he’s planning on doing with all those other series, but I think there are at least characters from some of them that’ll pop up here and there in his work. This one is about a lonely, sad vampire, as you can probably tell from the cover, and his quest to find a woman. He runs into a blind, obnoxious bat, a Mexican lizard, and a tiny fairy who offers to help him find a woman, at least until she discovers that he can’t dance. This has a lot less mayhem than the average Cattapan comic, and I’m all for mayhem. Of course, it’s a more quiet, introspective book by nature, so less mayhem might be expected, for now. And I don’t get why so many pages end in a bad pun. Pace yourself, man! You have more than 8 pages to work with now, you can throw as many bad puns in as you like! All in all not his best work, but it’s OK. Future issues will tell the story. Contact info is all over the place, or you could check out an issue through me, if you like…