Dracula has come to Georgia, with his sights set on meeting Brielle, the daughter of his oldest enemy. Your Major Spoilers review of Dracula: Blood Hunt #1 from Marvel Comics, awaits!

DRACULA: BLOOD HUNT #1

Writer: Danny Lore
Artist: Vincenzo Carratu
Colorist: David Curiel
Letterer: VC’s Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: May 7th, 2024

Previously, the sun has been blocked out by some sort of sorcery, allowing swarms of vampires to terrorize the world. Dracula, the lord of vampires, has been living in his own nation making preparations, while the daughter of Blade, Brielle Brooks, who also has his powers, attends high school in Atlanta.

TO STUDY, OR TO SLAY VAMPIRES

Dracula: Blood Hunt #1 starts with Dracula donning his armor and gathering his weapons as he makes preparations to go to Atlanta. He’s informed that his spy has arrived to deliver her report. After receiving the information, Dracula has the spy killed and her blood stored for a road trip snack. In Atlanta, Brielle is in the middle of scheduling a study date with her friends when suddenly she starts to feel strange, and the sky turns dark. Her powers start to manifest, and she realizes something is wrong and goes to get her vampire-slaying gear. Elsewhere, Dracula arrives and immediately begins asking for the location of a girl. Cut to Brielle in the fight of her life against a horde of vampires. She tries her best, but the numbers are too great, until she’s joined in battle by Dracula himself.

GOOD OLD FASHIONED VAMPIRE KILLING FUN

Dracula: Blood Hunt #1 comes off as being singularly focused, and that focus is to get to the vampire killing action as quickly as possible. Sure, there’s a little setup and some hints at larger motives, but over half of this issue is an extended fight scene where both Brielle and Dracula rack up a pretty impressive bloodsucker body count. Thankfully, the action is well done here. Even though it goes on for a while, it doesn’t feel repetitive or gratuitous and there’s just enough narration from both Brielle and Dracula to give the fighting some context and perspective. On the flip side, this doesn’t give the issue a lot of space to give the main characters a solid voice. Even when the two leads are interacting with each other, there’s no clear indication about how they feel about each other, except for some quick acknowledgment that they should probably not like each other. Here’s the thing though, I don’t think the issue suffers too much from this lack of character development. At the end of the day, this is an action-packed comic that successfully scratches that sarcastic teenager versus the undead itch that has been a mainstay in pop culture since Buffy came on the scene.

CLEVERLY VIOLENT

As mentioned above, the main focus of Dracula: Blood Hunt #1 is the fighting and killing, so there are plenty of scenes depicting death and dismemberment. Interestingly enough, this issue manages to capture all that violence without ever getting gratuitously gory, while not feeling sanitized. This is done with some strategic motion blurring and a heavy emphasis on the aftermath of the various scuffles. Beyond the violence, the action sequences have a fluid feel to them, no one ever feels like they’re standing still, which really shows off Brielle and Dracula’s speed and power, they feel in control, and most of that is due to their visuals.

BOTTOM LINE: THE BEST IN THE EVENT SO FAR

While the other entries in the Blood Hunt event have been focused on setting up the overarching story or establishing some important lore that’ll come into effect later, Dracula: Blood Hunt #1 gets to the core of what people want from this event and that is some bloody, vampire slaying adventures with Marvel Characters. It gives you just enough context and a hint of a reason why these two characters would be teaming up, and then just lets them start cutting vampires down. It might not be a sophisticated piece of storytelling, but it’s a good time and well crafted. 4 out of 5 stars.

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