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Monday, November 23, 2009. New Comics in 2 days

 

Mid-Unlife Crisis: Greenberg the Vampire

By Kristy Valenti

Tuesday October 28, 2008 09:00:00 am

Like many teen girls, I went through a vampire phase — it makes sense really.[1] It's possible that the vampire genre taps into inherently adolescent fantasies: vampires look fantastic without exercise or effort, easily seduce others and get to sleep all day. Likewise, they never have to "grow up" — never aging means the aforementioned looking great, etc., but it also means never having to do taxes or drive a minivan. Clearly, I also love comics, but I've never been able to find a vampire comic that I've liked. Tom Spurgeon's recent birthday greeting reminded me that I've always meant to check it out, so I've decided to begin my quest with Marvel's 1986 Greenberg the Vampire.

Written by J.M. DeMatteis and drawn by Mark Badger, GtV was Marvel's 20th "graphic novel." For Marvel, at that time, "Graphic novel" meant aping the European album format, and accordingly GtV is magazine-sized and in full color with high production value. Marvel's initial graphic novel offerings were a mix of superhero and proto-Vertigo genre offerings. GtV obviously falls into the latter category: there are cusses in it, and I imagine the pitch was "a Woody Allen vampire movie." The high concept is not completely without promise — there could be some very funny or even philosophical situations arising from the idea.

However, when I opened the book, I was dismayed by the hacky writing style — and then was relieved when I found it was intentionally hacky, because it's the narration of Oscar Greenberg, a pulpy, celebrity-in-seclusion novelist in Manhattan who's going through a creative slump. Cute redhead and current flame Denise, whom his Jewish family — which conveniently includes a butcher brother who keeps him in "kosher blood" — disapproves of, accidentally turned him into a vampire. As (even) stranger things begin to happen, Greenberg is invited to adapt one of his books into a screenplay. However, as I continued to read, I realized two things about GtV: DeMatteis never provides us with an example of Greenberg's "good" writing (unless the conclusion is supposed to be his "good" writing, in which case, DeMatteis is never able to pull off an example of Greenberg's "good writing"), and that old saw about how it takes a good writer to write "bad" writing well is completely true. This is a problem, because DeMatteis essentially did away with some of the more interesting ethical dilemmas inherent in the vampire myth, only to replace them with Greenberg's mid-unlife crisis and guilt about leaving the traditional, loving family nest to become the "King of Jewish Vampires" and mingle with shallow, beautiful people; and a dull meditation on how writers get their inspiration. However, since we have pages and pages of text proving how poor Greenberg's writing is (there are a lot of "You sees," "I must admits," all caps and plenty of italics), there's not much at stake here (pardon the pun).

Badger's painted art, in a bright palette with lots of yellows, is a bit stronger than the writing, but it has its flaws as well. I'm not sure if this is because of the reproduction technology available at the time, but darker colors come out muddy.[2] At times Badger's art is so loose it breaks up to the point of blank sketchiness. Still, Badger draws the naturally aged characters[3] beautifully, in contrast to the vapidly attractive main characters. Badger also has a flair for costuming: though the characters' clothes are long out of fashion, they still come across as quite cool.

What GtV shares with its "Woody Allen vampire movie" concept is, unfortunately, that it fulfills the stereotype about what is bad in some of Allen's films — a successful neurotic with an attractive mate who is inexorably drawn to a fresh young woman who makes him feel sexy (I haven't even delved into Greenberg's mind-controlled affair with a woman who's supposedly 16 years old or his Bar Mitzvah deflowering), as told with the wit and grace of a 15-year-old teenager whose favorite author is Stephen King. The only moment GtV performs to its potential is when Greenberg and Denise have a spat while in bat form. If only there had been a few more scenes like that, Greenberg the Vampire could have been the more mature book it seems like it was aiming for.

Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2008

 

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