This one came up in the suggested reading section on my Kindle, so I took a chance on it, mainly for the Stephen King connection. It's a nice take on the well worn vampire tropes, skipping between two evocative time periods and locations - the wild west of the 1880s and Hollywood of the 1920s. The conceit is that in addition to the traditional European vampires (predatory creatures lurking in the shadows) we have a new breed of blood sucker who can walk in the daylight and whose powers are linked to the phase of the moon.
The two main characters are Skinner Sweet - a notorious outlaw who becomes the first American vampire - and Pearl Jones, an aspiring Hollywood actress who is saved by Sweet and also turned into a vampire. The stories alternate between the two settings, and also between the two writers who are clearly bouncing ideas off each other.
Scott Snyder is a long time comics writer who was influenced by King, whereas King himself is a comparative newbie to the medium. The discipline of working with an artist seems to suit Stephen King's style and being restricted in the amount of words he can fit into a comics bubble also restrains some of his tendencies to over describe things. There are some script pages included at the end which make for interesting reading as a behind the scenes feature. The artwork by Rafael Albuquerque is stylised but evocative, nicely depicting the characters and locations, and I especially liked the detail in the western scenes
This collection features the first five issues of the comic series, before Scott Snyder took over as the sole author. I am probably going to read some more of these which take the story forward into other time periods.
