True Blood starts up this weekend, and being Houston Press's resident high-five inspector, astrologist and vampire/vampyre expert, I will once again be bringing you my particular brand of coverage of the show as I have for the four years past. It's still a good show, though I suspect it's time to maybe pack it in and move on, and even in a world somewhat bloated on vampires, it still has its charms.
Between True Blood and the last Twilight film (Finally! Thank you, Vampire Jesus!), it's going to be another year not only of vampires, but of a particular kind of vampire. Namely, sexy vampires. Ashley Greene, Deborah Ann Woll, Jackson Rathbone, Alexander Skarsgård and on, and on, and on. These are extremely attractive people because apparently only underwear models become the undead.
Frankly, as much as I enjoy looking at any of these people without their clothes on, I've always been against the idea of the erotic monster. A vampire is really horrifying if you think about it. It's a rotting corpse that leeches off you. Now they're basically porn for people that think HIM is edgy. Well, I like my vampires hideous and horrible, so here's my tribute to the ugly.
Typically, Doctor Who took the established order of going from vampires to werewolves and did it in reverse. The Tenth Doctor battled alien lycanthropes in Scotland, eventually uncovering a line of werewolf blood in the Windsor line. Then, the Eleventh Doctor traveled to Venice, where a finishing school for girls was apparently a breeding nest for vampires.
Now, they weren't earthly vampires, they were a fish race called the Saturnyne that were using holograms to walk amongst us. Still, they had fangs, were invisible in mirrors and drank the blood of the living in order to transform them into creatures like themselves. That's pretty vampiric.
Usually, they appeared as normal humans with anglerfish teeth. Once their disguises were lifted, they looked like a cross between Lovecraft's Deep Ones and lobsters. As far as hidden parasites wearing the skins of men go that's pretty bad, but there is worse...
If you haven't picked up Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner's comic book Witch Doctor from Image, then you are missing out on one of the best things happening in comic books today. The book is on hiatus until the team gets the next story arc ready, but I just reread the first trade paperback and it's still phenomenal.
The book stars Doctor Vincent Morrow, an occult physician. In his world, all the monsters are descended from the parasites, gut fauna and other microbes that came on the bodies of the Old Ones. Morrow treats these magical infections with a clinical approach that makes the comic feel like House meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Vampires in the comic manifest as slug-like parasitoids that live in the gut of the corpse they're controlling, but that can reach out through the mouth like the second jaws from Alien. Even when nestled in the body, they still make the corpse's mouth look like the Sarlacc pit. Of course, if it's teeth you're interested in, it's hard to beat...
