RAPTORS BOOK 4

Art by: Enrico Marini | Written by: Jean Dufaux

RAPTORS book four starts off with an odd vignette that initially feels like there's been a multi-year time jump. We see a family being stalked by vampires in an old factory, and dialogue informs us that these places exist around the world. Called "Hell's Kitchens", they are where vampires corner and stalk humans as prey. It feels like the proclamation passed in the prior book -- that humans will be rounded up and thrown into zoos for the vampires' amusement -- has come to pass. But then Aznar Akeba shows up and kills the vampires (though not before they brutally murder the family's parents), and we cut to the vampire council, shocked that Aznar has turned against them. So apparently these Hell's Kitchens exist in the present, but humanity isn't aware of them. It is, as noted, a confusing opening scene, but it's not the end of the world.

Moving along, we find our heroine, Lenore, has become the lover of Camilla since last we saw them. But Lenore leaves Camilla, choosing to walk her own path away from the vampiress. Then we catch up with Lenore's former partner, Spiaggi, who makes a deal with the vampire council: if they put him in charge of the police, he'll find Lenore and Aznar and turn Aznar in to them in exchange for their letting Lenore and him disappear.

Next, Lenore teams up with Aznar and Camilla's brother, Drago, to attack her family estate. She kills her brother while Drago murders her mother and father, and Aznar wipes out everyone else. The vampire trio destroys the house, then Lenore leaves with Aznar.

RAPTORS BOOK 3

Art by: Enrico Marini | Written by: Jean Dufaux

The fourth installment of RAPTORS has way more action than either of the previous volumes. It begins with a police raid in which a gaggle of cops are killed by Camilla, while elsewhere, her brother Drago murders a senator who was depicted in the prior book as a key member of the vampire shadow council.

At the same time, a mysterious priest is, for unknown reasons, trying to track down our protagonist, Detective Lenore. Instead he finds a massive community of runaway children living beneath the city. The children reveal to the priest that they've fled their families for fear of being "turned" to vampires by their parents. Interestingly, in the prior book Lenore observed that there weren't as many children in the city as there used to be. If that many kids have run away that it's a noticeable epidemic, does that mean that the majority of the adults in the city are undead at this point?? The story doesn't get into this, but it seems likely.

However the Earth still has a decent-sized human population, as our next scene is a meeting of the vampire council in which it's decided that humanity will be rounded up and herded into zoos rather than continuing to enjoy freedom (and ignorance of the vampires' existence, apparently). It's at this point that we finally catch up with Lenore, living in solitary confinement since she was captured by the police at the second book's conclusion. She's stripped in her cell and nearly raped, but her partner, Spiaggi, comes to her rescue along with the priest.

RAPTORS BOOK 2

Art by: Enrico Marini | Written by: Jean Dufaux

It seems my issue with the first volume of RAPTORS somehow traveled back in time twenty years to land in the ear of writer Jean Dufeaux, because as of this second installment, the infuriating vague aimlessness has vanished and the story has become defined, informative, and compelling.

An indeterminate amount of time has passed since the first book, and our heroes, detectives Lenore and Spiaggi, are still believed dead to the world. The police are seeking answers from Lenore's brother, Newton, and he promises to inform them if she turns up. Meanwhile, the detectives have closed in on Lenore's former lover and current head of the police force, Barnes -- who was revealed in the previous book to be a member of the immortal cabal running the world. Lenore and Spiaggi catch up with Barnes just after he's murdered a young woman, and chase him to the roof of a nightclub. But he makes an impossible leap to the next rooftop and then, before our heroes' eyes, is murdered by the mystery twins.

At this point the story devotes a large chunk of its runtime to a new character named Aznar Akeba -- a college student who we learn, by way of an on-page murder and resurrection, is also one of the immortals. Akeba is taken before the secret council, where they reveal to him -- and to readers -- their origins. It turns out (though for some reason the actual word is never used) that these folks are all vampires! Centuries ago, they gave up their weakness to daylight in exchange for a loss of their bloodlust, and integrated into human society as humanity's hidden masters. The telltale cysts behind the immortals' ears have developed over time and mark them as descendants of those vampires who made the transition into humankind.

RAPTORS BOOK 1

Art by: Enrico Marini | Written by: Jean Dufaux

RAPTORS is the story of... well, to be honest, after finishing the first book, I'm not exactly certain what it's about. I can say it's set in the modern day, in an unnamed city which combines shades of New York and Gothic Europe, and that the protagonists are a police detective named Vicky Lenore and her partner, Benito Spiaggi. We meet them initially as they investigate the latest in a string of killings. Every corpse has been found with an unusual cyst behind the ear, and regardless of age, each victim's organs have been discovered to be young and healthy during autopsies.

Almost immediately, the story reveals that the killings are being carried out by a brother and sister with a leather/latex fetish, who have been stalking these people and usually killing them in their homes. It seems the cyst is a trait shared by all of these apparently immortal individuals. They can die, but immediately return to life -- however the mystery siblings are able to kill them permanently, and using this ability, they're working their way through all of their kind to pick them off.

Confused yet? I can't say I blame you. While my summary is sparse on the specifics, that's basically all we know by the end of the first book. There are bits and pieces more, for example the fact that these immortals live among us and form some sort of conspiracy which has infiltrated the police, the FBI, and presumably more -- but there's absolutely no explanation as to what they are or why they're doing all this.

RAPTORS

I was so impressed with Enrico Marini's artwork on GYPSY back in December, that I decided I should read more from him. Well, not long after a finished GYPSY, Comixology held a Europe Comics sale, so I grabbed another series Marini drew, RAPTORS. (Note that I never "Unboxed" this one since I didn't want to give away this new series so soon before starting it.)

Like GYPSY, I bought this series "blind" based soley on the appealing artwork, so I really have no idea what to expect from it. I did read, subsequent to reading GYPSY< that it was Marini's crack at doing something with the layout and style of a Japanese manga, so I'm curious if he had a similar sort of pastiche in mind when he did RAPTORS (which was originally published around twenty years ago).

Anyway, starting on Friday and for the next four weeks, we'll be examining the series one volume per week!

GYPSY VOLUME 5 & VOLUME 6

"THE WHITE WING" | "AZTEC LAUGHTER"
Art by: Enrico Marini | Written by: Thierry Smolderen

GYPSY's fourth volume moved away from the one-off adventure presented in volume four and back into the style that defined the first few books -- a single story complete in one book, but with an overarching plotline to tie everything together. And, as a special bonus, this book references the previous installment as well, tying it in, however, loosely, with the larger narrative.

In this story, set about a year after the fourth book, our hero Tsagoi finds himself in the Middle Eastern country of Turdistan, where Bibi is doing research for her next book. It's established that she's written a trio of prior novels already, each based on her adventures with her brother and sharing the same titles as GYPSY volumes one through three. Now she's out to pen an expose on the White Wing, and has come to the land of the organization's birth, along with her publisher, the beautiful Eva Dargold, for dirt.

Tsagoi links up with the women, beds Eva, and then takes off on a chase with her when Bibi is kidnapped by the Sorceress. The action eventually reaches the White Wing's new lair in the desert, where we learn that the Sorceress is out to rebuild the organization after it fell on hard times. But following the story's action-packed conclusion, we learn there's more to the White Wing than we were led to believe, as the Sorceress is seen taking commands from a shadowy council.

GYPSY VOLUME 3 & VOLUME 4

"THE DAY OF THE TSAR" | "DARK EYES"
Art by: Enrico Marini | Written by: Thierry Smolderen

Intrigue! If there was any one thing that the first couple volumes of GYPSY might have been missing -- and honestly, it's pretty hard to say they lacked for anything at all -- it would be intrigue. But now even that box is checked in the series' third book.

Volume 3 is set, as was volume 2, in Siberia, where our hero Tsagoi and his sister Bibi have hitched up with a group of Russian revolutionaries led by the young and newly crowned Tsar, Ivan -- who was rescued, along with his uncle, by Tsagoi in the prior installment. Ivan and Bibi fall in love, and the young man announces his plan to marry her after the revolution's opening volley. Tsagoi is roped into serving in the Tsar's army, and soon the battle is joined. Our heroes attack the castle of warlord Slomo, and after a bloody skirmish, he's overthrown. The Sorceress shows up during the fight with Tsagoi's hijacked truck and an arms shipment for Slomo, and reinforcements sent by the Selmer Corporation appear as well, via dirigible, but these new arrivals fail to turn the tide in Slomo's favor. His men are beaten, he is executed, and that night, Ivan and Bibi are wed.

And this is where the intrigue comes in. We learn in pretty quick order that Ivan does not possess Tsar's blood after all; he's a pawn used by his uncle in service of a shadowy organization called the White Wing -- and what's more the Sorceress is a member of that same organization. The Sorceress tries to kill Tsagoi, Ivan's uncle tries to kill Ivan, and all heck generally breaks loose. Eventually the bad guys are thwarted (though the Sorceress escapes), but Ivan confesses his common blood to the masses, and gets shot for his trouble. The newly widowed Bibi joins Tsagoi in his truck as they leave town, along with Big Ben, a former Selmer trucker turned ally in the aftermath of the revolution.

GYPSY VOLUME 1 & VOLUME 2

"THE GYPSY STAR" | "THE FIRES OF SIBERIA"
Art by: Enrico Marini | Written by: Thierry Smolderen

Okay, folks -- I'm just gonna cut straight to the chase: this story is absolutely insane in the best possible way. You want a protagonist who talks about himself in the third person and constantly spouts bizarre colloquial exclamations? You want a high-stakes long-haul gun-running mission across the world in the not-too-distant future? You want knife fights, gunplay, and sexual situations?? Then GYPSY is the comic you've been waiting for.

Set in an alternate version of the dawn of the twenty-first century, "The Gypsy Star" opens with a young girl getting rescued from a gang of toughs by her older brother. The siblings are gypsies, feared and hated by the other children in their orphanage. When the headmaster arrives to break up the scuffle, he is shot by the brother, Tsagoi. Tsagoi flees, promising to send enough money to his sister, Oblivia, that she can leave the orphanage and move into a boarding school.

We then jump twelve years into the future and learn that Tsagoi was successful in his mission. Thanks to the destruction of the ozone layer, airplanes have been outlawed on Earth. Everything is transported around the world via gigantic cargo trucks which travel a superhighway that links every continent. Tsagoi has become a trucker under the handle Gypsy, and has been sending cash to his sister on a regular basis. But now, Oblivia -- Bibi for short -- has sought out her brother to find out why the money has stopped rolling in.

GYPSY

I'm going to close out Fridays this year with something a little different. This series was a total blind buy on my part, based primarily on the artwork. At some point last year, Europe Comics had a linewide sale on Comixology and, as I find myself looking to expand my comic-reading horizons nowadays, I perused the offerings. GYPSY, by Thierry Smolderen and Enrico Marini, caught my eye thanks to the lush imagery from Marini. The series' premise jumped out at me as well -- it sort of sounded like a post-apocalyptic "Bean Bandit meets Mad Max" kind of thing. (Heck, the lead character even looked a bit like Bean to my eye!) So I figured the price was right, and I might as well go all in on the series' five volumes.

Now, over a year later, I've decided to actually read the stories -- and you're coming with me, whether you like it or not! (I mean, unless you just don't read the posts; then I guess you could choose not to come with me. But why would you do that??) The next three Fridays, we'll check out GYPSY in its entirety, two volumes per week. And if you noticed that doesn't quite bring us up to the end of the year, you're right -- I plan to take the final week of December off (aside from Monday's regularly scheduled and already written Superman/Wonder Woman stuff), though I may slot in the month's Unboxing post for that Friday so something goes up. Then it'll be onward and upward to something new for Fridays in 2019!

Available on Amazon: Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 3 | Volume 4 | Volume 5 | Volume 6