The Vain

Title: The Vain
Author: Eliot Rahal

Publisher: Oni Press

Year: April 2021

Pages: 126

Genre: Graphic Novel

Reading Time: 25 March

Binding: PDF courtesy of Oni Press via NetGalley

Goodreads

Stars:
★★★★☆

Blurb:

Chicago, 1941. A blood bank is held up in a robbery, but no cash is taken—only blood. It's the latest in a string of similar robberies and as the United States prepares to enter World War II, FBI Agent Felix Franklin is certain it's part of a wider plot to weaken the United States by depriving it of its blood supply. But the truth is much more sinister.
The four robbers are vampires: immortal, physically powerful, and after decades of honing their skills, practically untraceable. But time goes on and the vampires—who call themselves The Vain—stay the same in a world that is rapidly changing around them. As security measures evolve, stealing blood is harder every day. And with every decade that passes, Agent Franklin gets closer to finding them. Capturing them. Ending them.
The Vain is a story about wild, eternal youth, reckless rebellion, endless love, and how in the end...maybe it is better to burn out than fade away.

Review:

It's been a while since I was attracted to a graphic novel by the cover but this one was just gorgeous, look at all that lovely red! The artists have done a beautiful job in this graphic novel. The colours and tone changes depending on our setting, time and narrator and I felt especially immersed, as though I were watching it play out on a screen and hearing it rather than reading. A good mix of gore and humour in the details.
This was not the typical setting I've seen for vampires (and I grew up with Twilight at it's peak and vampire books around every corner). I genuinely had to think about the logistics of being a vampire in a modern world. Blood bank heists, making most of the opportunity of war and being hunted for what you are. There's tension between the characters as they try to work out how to survive and I love the LGBTQ+ representation, it's shown and written very naturally.
Our main vampires have some . . . strange names but I can get past that. They're all different and I'd be very interested to find out more about their backgrounds and how they came to be as there's only hints of it shown. I really enjoyed the few human characters we also followed, you see their lives unravel over the years whilst the vampires are unchanged. I love the idea of the FBI investigating paranormal activity and the havoc it could create. Both to the lives it could ruin in the search for the truth and the violence committed in chasing and using such formidable predators.
We take a range of settings throughout the few chapters in this novel and I simply wish that each were a little bit longer. It would have given a chance to really explain and relax in to the new settings rather than having a narrator give a bit of an information dump. I would not have been opposed to a much longer story really building up the tension for the equivalent of each of these chapters, it would have been worth it!