Redneck vol. 5: Tall Tales

“Tall Tales” wants to be “The Godfather, Part II” of this series.  I say this because its story moves both backwards and forwards, telling the history of vampires while also expanding on the present day story of the Bowman clan.  The history is centered around one character, Nicodemus, who became the very first vampire after he took some ill-advised prompting from a man on fire.  This led to millenia consigned to the night as he built a group of followers, some of whom will be familiar to readers, and eventually crossed the seas to the New World.  Demus, as he’s known to his friends, tells this history to Greg, who Bartlett and Evil are still trying to find after he disappeared at the end of the previous volume.  They finally get their answers when the Vampire Parliament comes knocking, asking for J.V. and the rest of the Bowman family’s help with the upcoming war.  You see, Demus has a score to settle with the Parliament, and his first course of action towards making it is to burn Texas down.

As to the reason why Demus has such a beef with the Parliament, that’s one of the areas where this volume falls short.  Writer Donny Cates tries his best to give the history of vampires an epic sweep, tying into key points in history.  He and artist Lisandro Estherren are only really successful in the opening chapter, a mostly silent tale regarding Demus’ origins.  Everything after that comes off as feeling like varying degrees of rushed.  Particularly in the bit where Demus’ first war with the Parliament is escalated to that point over the course of six pages.

Still, bits like, “We’re in Dracula’s castle?  You knew Dracula?!” are fun, and the present-day sequences are free of the need to condense a couple thousand years of history in a very limited amount of space.  They also do a better job of playing up the series’ familiar themes regarding the importance of family, and setting up the final conflict as a whole.  By the end of the volume, armies have been readied, blood has been spilled, and two sides are ready to tear each other to shreds.  Even if “Tall Tales” doesn’t quite succeed in creating a sweeping historical saga, it fulfills its most important mission:  Getting the reader hyped for the final volume.