The power of the blood.
Creative Staff:
Story: Troy Brownfield
Art: Kewber Baal
What They Say:
In this issue, the gloves come off as Dracula lays siege to the Blood Queen’s castle! The dark prince brings his powers to bear, unleashing his servants and stalking the stone halls with one purpose: draining the life from Elizabeth. But she didn’t become the Blood Queen by accident; torment and death have been her long-time companions. Will Dracula add her to his list of victims, or will Elizabeth have a deadly surprise for the lord of vampires?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The first half of this miniseries has been a lot of fun in getting to see events from both sides at different times and to get a decent understanding of the motivation of each of them. Elizabeth’s I’m a bit more familiar with having read her series, though with Dracula you have the large history across so many tellings that you can fill in the blanks easily enough. Pairing these two together definitely worked well since they work off of blood magic in different ways, and there’s also the whole pained past and what they’re trying to accomplish in their respective lands. Admittedly, part of me really hoped for a stronger team up and a change to the world because of it, siring generations of progeny to remake history, but when the title of the series has “versus” in it, well, that’s not what you’re going to get. You’re going to get two powerful people going at it.
This installment moves that forward as there are several events moving along at a decent pace. For Elizabeth, she dominates this issue as she’s feeling full of power and confident of her position with all that she’s accomplished in such a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately for her, she underestimated Dracula because of her own dealings, and his approach works a similar but different way in dealing with enemies. Such is the case as we see how he uses bats to instill fear in a big spectacle, forcing her to use her abilities and shed a lot of blood, but that’s just the start of the fear he’s trying to put into her. With his incursion into the castle through his agents, he’s taken down a number of her guards and loyalists, turning them against her and making it something that hits her because of it. She’s had her allies and those under her thrall and having to eliminate them after solidly good service doesn’t sit well with her.
The biggest piece that comes into this is in dealing with Zsofi, as she’s been turned completely and she has tasted the power of the vampire with her own blood magic. Though there’s an awkward moment or two in panel layout and presentation, what we get is definitely well done as it forces Elizabeth to really have to deal with the problem that strikes close to her. She doesn’t exactly give up on Zsofi right away, but she also knows there’s no turning back, which haunts her all the more. The two have some really good scenes together, but we also see just how committed Elizabeth is to her cause and that she knows once turned, Zsofi was no more than an agent of Dracula’s to be dispatched. The hardened side of Elizabeth has been forged for some time and it’s come together beautifully, if disturbingly, here.
In Summary:
While we do get some time with the Ottoman soldiers outside of her castle that are slowly making their move, the bulk of this is all about Elizabeth and losing portions of her seat of power. It’s chipping away at her in a good way that gets even more intense towards the end as Dracula really makes his presence known in a way that should strike fear into her. While Dracula has a small presence himself, at least physically, what he does is strike fear in some really great ways here. Seeing how Elizabeth reacts is what works the best here and through some solid pacing and really great artwork, it hits all the right marks, especially when involving Zsofi. With one more issue to go, I’m unsure of how things will end, but hopefully we’ll be seeing another miniseries of some sort in the future as well.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: April 29th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
