A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenberg recommends Requiem Vampire Knight Vol.5: DragonBlitz

Okay, so it wasn’t that long ago that I recommended  Requiem: Vampire Knight Vol. 3  here.  But I’m recommending the series again anyways!  Two more volumes have come out since then, Halloween is at the end of this week, and seriously, this series is worth recommending twice!

If you missed my earlier review, here’s the book in a nutshell: Heinrich was a German soldier, in love with a Jewish woman named Rebecca, during World War II.  After dying on the eastern front, he finds himself reborn as a vampire in Resurrection, a twisted mirror of Earth where dead sinners are reborn as monsters.  He’s recruited by an order of vampire knights, and pines over his lost love while navigating the various intrigues and atrocities of the afterlife.

The series is violent, satirical, imaginative, and—above all else—gorgeous.  Like, eyes popping out of your head, “oh man look at this page!” gorgeous.  Olivier Ledroit  is seriously some kind of wizard, except with a paint brush rather than a wand.  And he somehow keeps getting better with the release of each volume. 

Volume 5 opens on Earth with Rebecca’s sister in 1961, hunting Nazis in South America, before the story jumps back to Resurrection where Heinrich and Rebecca are fleeing Dracula’s airship fleet in what looks like a WWI era triplane.  From there the book is full-throttle crazy-pants all the way to the end, featuring acrobatic aerial combat against dragons, a zombie pirate assault on a vampire opium train, and a tense infiltration into the heart of the vampire capital.

Pat Mills  and Olivier Ledroit have created an insane world that by all rights shouldn’t work nearly half as well as it does.  By sheer force of crazy imagination and masterful execution, however, they’ve succeeded in elevating Requiem: Vampire Knight  into must-read territory.

If you’re looking for something to sink your teeth into this Halloween, Requiem: Vampire Knight is highly recommended.  Again.  (It’s really that good.)

[Read Requiem Vampire Knight Vol. 5: Dragon Blitz on comiXology]

Mike Isenberg is an Associate Production Coordinator at comiXology, and the co-writer of First Law Of Mad Science.  He lives in Harlem with his cats, Tesla and Edison.