by Jason Vaughn

Long before the world was forced to choose between camp Edward and camp Jacob in Twilight, and well before Sookie became the never ending damsel in distress on True Blood, the genre world got its fix of horror/romance by the queen of all things supernatural, Anne Rice. Now longtime fans of Rice have a new reason to be excited with the release of IDW’s latest limited series, Servant of the Bones. Thanks to my sister, I grew up a big fan of Rice’s Vampire Lestat series. This eventually led to me reading her other books outside of the series such as Servant of the Bones, a dark tale of the demon Azriel who’s hunting down a murderer in New York City. (A murderer in NYC, go figure.)

IDW describes the comic version of the story as a “six-part tale of murder, demonic revenge, and the redemptive power of faith.” The series is written, of course, by Anne Rice, the multiple New York Times Bestselling author of Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and Queen of the Damned, with art by the New York Times Best-selling team of The Last Unicorn, Renae DeLiz and Ray Dillion. And if that isn’t enough, there’s a little extra nugget of goodiness for all the die-hard fans in the form of a new essay by Rice at the end of this first issue. For first time readers of Anne Rice’s work this issue is an excellent jumping on point, and for those of you familiar with the book the adaptation is as close to the original source material as one can possibly get. I could go on for days about how brilliant the art is or how DeLiz and Dillon go out of their way to perfectly set the tone of the story, but just go out and get a copy and see for yourself. Servant of the Bones hits the shelves this Wednesday the 17^th, so don’t forget to log on to Comixology and add a copy to your pull list or you just might miss out on the first issue of what is sure to be IDW’s latest hit, and that would suck. (Get it, “suck”? Come on, we’ve been talking about vampires! Ah, never mind.)

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