Do you like pirates?  Do you like vampires?  Do you like pirate vampires?  Then you're exactly the sort of person that Sea of Red is aimed at, a new ongoing series from Image featuring pirates, vampires, and pirate vampires.  And, for that matter, vampire pirates too.

Apparently the book moves into the present day with future issues, but this is the origin story, so it's 1533.  Marco Esperanza survives the sinking of his ship and is lucky enough to get picked up by a passing vessel.  Unfortunately, it's a pirate vessel.  Even more unfortunately, it's a vampire pirate vessel.  You probably saw that coming, didn't you?

The first thing that leaps out at you is the art.  Coloured exclusively in red, it certainly looks like nothing else on the market.  What sounds at first like gimmickry turns out to be surprisingly effective.  The story feels like something legendary and mythical, while also immediately marking itself out from the usual visual styles that we associate with these genres.  The creators are setting out here to play with the genre conventions without getting sucked into them, and the unique look of the book plays a key part in their success.  It's different, but it feels absolutely right for the premise.

It's lurid and violent, but then if you're not looking for lurid and violent, you're probably not in the market for a vampire pirate comic.  To be honest, neither genre is particularly a favourite of mine, but I'm interested to see where the creators are going with this.  They promise "no genres, no heroes, no villains", which seems ambitious - this issue really feels more like an exercise in cross-pollination rather than outright abandoning the genre boundaries.  But it does succeed in taking two rather stale genres and combining them into something fresh.  A good start.

Rating: A-

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