From a logical standpoint, this issue shouldn't work. We're near the end of the mini-series and we're just now meeting the adversary, and on top of that Winick just killed off one of my favorite characters. But somehow, not only does it work, it is fantastic reading, once again topping an already strong previous issue and leaving me anxious for whatever comes next. Blood and Water has largely been a story about setting forth Winick's take on this kind of particular vampirism, laying down the rules of being a vampire and vampire society. However, he's married it to some exceptionally strong characterization and interesting dialogue as well as a lurking menace in the background, and this issue is the payoff, based around us being strongly invested in the lead characters and curious about the villain.
In the first two issues, Blood and Water seemed to be more about friendship than about vampirism. Sure, the explanations for how vampires work and how they interact was neat and inventive, but what kept me coming back was the strong friendship between Adam, Nicky and Josh. The realistic characterization was actually reminiscent of Winick's work on the autobiographical Pedro and Me, but married to fictional elements, and seeing how these three characters reacted to the transformation into vampires (whether we saw it now or heard about it in flashback) was fascinating and often a lot of fun.
The shift into a darker tone for this fourth (and one presumes the fifth) issue could easily have been jarring, but Winick still keeps the story revolving around these friendships. Except that now, the focus isn't on the fun, but on the grief and the anger, and Winick has done his job well enough that the reader shares those emotions. In addition, the vampire mythology stuff is still being spun out, whether it's the discussions of what happens to a vampire who comes back from the dead or why something killed Josh. The revelations about Adam's transformation into a vampire, and the introduction of the Tribe concept, was surprising but made absolute sense in context with everything else we've learned so far.
Coker's shadowy artwork fits the darker tone of this book as perfectly as it has fit every issue, with some especially moody work on the flashback to the origins of Tribe. It's up to him to convey a lot of the emotions that Winick puts in the dialogue, whether it's the absolutely devastating grief that Nicky feels at finding Josh, the creepy and dangerous vibe of the "zombie" vampire or the fury and fear of the vampires when they discover what Adam is. Coker has taken his art to a whole new level on Blood and Water, and his work here has me anxious to see his next project.
With one issue left to go, I don't have much trouble declaring Blood and Water an absolute success, and a Vertigo series that is well worth hunting down.
