A comiXologist Recommends:
Mike Isenburg recommends Requiem Vampire Knight Vol. 3: Dracula

Vampire Nazis in Hell battling zombie pirate nuns in airship-to-airship combat.  Does that get your attention?

Originally published in English by Heavy Metal magazine, Requiem: Vampire Knight is an insanely imaginative, over-the-top, and gorgeously illustrated fantasy horror series from French artist Olivier Ledroit and British writer Pat Mills.

Mills, sometimes known as “the godfather of British comics,” co-created the hugely influential sci-fi anthology series 2000 AD, and wrote many of the earliest stories for its best-known character, Judge Dredd.  He’s also well known for his ultraviolet superhero satire Marshal Law, drawn by Kevin O'Neil.

Requiem: Vampire Knight continues in Mills’ tradition of grim, violent satire.  In the gothic science-fantasy world that Mills and Ledroit have created, dead sinners are reborn as monsters in a dimension known as “Resurrection,” a dark mirror of Earth where land and seas are reversed and time flows backwards.  The story follows a German soldier named Heinrich who dies on the eastern front of World War II in 1944 and finds himself reborn on Resurrection as a vampire.  Initiated into an order of vampire knights who re-name him Requiem, Heinrich pines for his love Rebecca (a Jewish woman he lost to the Gestapo during the war on Earth) in an attempt to hold onto his humanity as he fights enemies both within and without the order.

The story is, well, kind of nuts… but in the best possible way!  Resurrection is a world full of atrocity and intrigue, and oh man does it look gorgeous. Ledroit’s masterful paintings bring this strange gothic world to life in a way that boggles the mind.  There are pages in this series that you’ll want to hang on your wall.

Fans of that other well-known British “grim-dark” gothic science-fantasy world, Warhammer 40,000, will definitely find a lot in common here to love.  As will anyone who likes a good horror/action story or beautifully painted comics, as long as you’re not too squeamish.

[Pick up Requiem Vampire Knight Vol. 3: Dracula here!]

_{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.}