Life Sucks by Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria, and Warren Pleece

Hello! Back to posting, finally, and with good reason. No, make that GREAT reason: Life Sucks, from those fab folks at First Second Books.

I enjoy the work of Jessica Abel so I was looking forward to reading this GN. I regret that I missed both of her book tour visits here in May. What was I thinking?

Vampire stories are everywhere these days, but thankfully the three artists/writers of this GN have brought in a little life to that genre. Heh. That's kind of a joke. Vampires. Bringing in life. :)

Oh, alright. Life Sucks is the story of Dave. Dave works the evening shift at the Last Stop convenience store. But here's the fun part - Dave's a vampire. He's pretty much the slave of his master who owns the store. The next funny part? It seems all of our late night employees (the copy guy, the coffee shop girl) are vampires. This is how they make their money - or, er, their masters make their money. Those castles and velvet jackets don't pay for themselves. That's just movie and novel mumbo jumbo. Really, though, the lack of velvet and black is super refreshing. The only folks in those outfits are the LA goths who lust for all things vampire and dark. Lots of poking fun at the vampire scene goes on here. Sweet!

Our hero Dave is "a nice guy". He doesn't want to kill people so he gets his blood from plasma banks. He's a vegetarian vampire and rather proud of himself to not have to kill to survive. He has a non-vampire roommate, Carl, and a buddy-guy vampire named Jerome. The kick in the story is when Dave falls in love with goth girl Rosa. She wants to be a vampire. He doesn't want her to become one.

Toss in the surfer dude/vampire brother-to-Dave Wes, Dave's capitalism-loving master Radu, and a few other young LA vamps and goths to round out the characters in our story. Our library catalogs this as adult, but it will easily appeal to teens. No nudity. Some swearing. The characters do not define themselves as teens, but I read them as young 20-somethings. This is a fun read that non-readers of vampire books (moi) will enjoy.

Also reviewed at:

Bookshelves of Doom

Big A little a

A Fuse #8 Production