Rating: WORTHY!
I'm not a fan of Anne Rice, nor of vampire stories in general (although I've made one or two exceptions), and I never read Interview With the Vampire, but this story looked appealing. I did see the movie, which was okay, but nothing special for me, so I had a vague idea of what was going to happen. This novel is essentially the same story as Interview..., but it's told in graphic novel format and from the PoV of Claudia, the young girl who is adopted by the two male vampires and who is played by Kirsten Dunst in the movie (the two male vamps are played by Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt). Now there's a dysfunctional family!
This version really digs into the psychology of Claudia, exploring her feelings and fears, and her understandable frustration and disgust with her mind maturing whilst her body remains that of a child. What a horrible fate. What a awful prison in which to be trapped! Doomed from the start because there is no way to win in this scenario, Claudia slowly grows to hate Lestat while perhaps hoping for a life with Louis which, while practical and appropriate from a purely chronological perspective and perhaps even a moral one, can never practically happen. Perhaps if they had lived three hundred years earlier when it was considered normal for children of Claudia's age to be married off? Perhaps if Louis had some spine? There's no happy answer to be had here.
You can feel the claustrophobia creep in from all the ragged edges of their lives. Claudia is strong and forceful - a sharply delineated counterpoint to the weak and vacillating Louis. She's the one who makes things happen and finally rids them of Lestat - or does she? This story does not end well for Claudia and we knew this all along, even if we wanted to hope for a better outcome for a juvenile vampire.
Ashley Marie Witter's story and art work are enjoyable. The art is simple and sepia toned, except for the blood, which makes it quite effective, even shocking at times. The vampire gore is restrained and sparse. I have issues with vampire stories which generally fail their own logic even within their own framework, which makes the stories truly dumb and unappealing to me. I have issues too, with two-hundred-year-old vampires finding anything of interest in a sixteen year old school girl, which is one reason I detest vampire stories in general. This one rather turned the tables on that, though. Instead of having a dirty old man lusting after a virginal juvenile (Edward, I'm looking at you, and don't you dare sparkle at me like that), this one went the opposite way and had a younger, but maturing vampire falling for an older one. I don't know how old Louis was, but the age difference between him and Claudia probably wasn't two hundred years!
There's another issue with vampires, too, which wasn't well handled here. They are eternally youthful, meaning that their cells regenerate. This is part of the canon, so it's fine insofar as it goes, but then in this story, Lestat gets injured and the injury failed to heal. I didn't get the 'logic' behind that. Those issues aside, though, I really enjoyed this retelling and I recommend it.
