Throughout the centuries, we have been fascinated with monsters and what would happen if they really did exist especially when it comes to vampires and werewolves. The two most iconic, recognizable, and the deadliest of creatures of the night known to man. For years, there have been countless stories featuring theses two groups of monsters doing battle against one another and now we have another one to add to the list with American Gothic Press’s Broken Moon.
Broken Moon by Steve Niles and Nat Jones, takes place in a distant future where vampires rule the world after most of the human race has been wiped out after a war on the moon caused serve damage to the earth’s ecosystem. The remaining members of the human race have either been hurdled up as cattle by the vampires or are living in hiding and forming a resistance group. Werewolves live in this world too but don’t seem to be interested in world domination like the vampires are and just want to survive even though they are dying from starvation. The vampires on the other hand seem to be mass producing something which could mean doom for every non-bloodsucker left on the planet.
Steve Niles, best known for 30 days of Night, has a knack for writing monster stories like this. Broken Moon has an interesting concept with a sci-fi battle on the moon causing enough destruction for the monsters to come out of hiding and start ruling whatever is left of us. There were a couple of redundancies that I noticed on several pages with the narrator saying one thing and then one of the characters repeating what the narrator said a page or two later which I found slightly annoying. The human cast isn’t all that memorable or distinguishable at the moment and I’m not even sure if any of them have names yet. The werewolves are done quite well making them both interesting and sympathetic enough to be seen as a possible ally for the humans against their vampire overlords. The general concept of vampires and werewolves fighting one another is pretty generic and cliché, but so far I’m hooked and interested on where this might be going.
The art by Nat Jones is very fitting for the story as well giving it a dark and ominous look to both the world and the characters. At the beginning, everything is bright and colorful but once the moon is destroyed and the monsters come out to play from the shadows, everything becomes darker making it fit more with the tone and setting. The character designs for the humans and vampires look just alright to me but I think that the werewolves look particularly cool with this art style.
VERDICT
Broken Moon has a nice balance of genres with its post-apocalypse and sci-fi setting mixed in with some classic movie monsters. I had some nitpicks here or there and the vampire vs werewolf concept is pretty over done, but none of that really ruined the overall story or the interesting setup for me. As a first issue, it did a great job of giving us an appetizer of whats to come and hopefully the next issue will make us want to dig our fangs even deeper into this interesting concept of a story.
FINAL SCORE: 8 out of 10
Kevin Dempsey
I'm a fun loving geek from New York who loves all things nerdy. I've been writing since I was in high school and plan on doing so for as long as I can. I hope to one day have a few comics of my own out there but for now I just want to focus on surviving post college graduation.
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