Killadelphia vol. 1: Sins of the Father

I thought I was getting a story about a son getting to know his dead father while vampires take over the City of Brotherly Love.  That part was mostly true.  What I got along with it was a story about our second president, John Adams, being the source of said vampire outbreak and working to change the course of America.  That is… certainly a premise, which came to writer Rodney Barnes after his sixth viewing of the musical “Hamilton.”  The problem is that while “Killadelphia” doesn’t quite commit the sin of taking that premise too seriously, it doesn’t offer up a whole lot of excitement regardless.

Instead we get lots of scenes of the cast hashing out their various agendas.  From small-town beat cop James Sangster Jr. and medical examiner Jane Padilla trying to wrap their heads around this new threat, to Adams’ bitter internal monologue about how history has treated him, to Tevin, a more recent convert who is becoming disillusioned with this former president’s agenda, everyone’s got something to do.  The problem is that it’s not delivered with a whole lot of style.  Barnes’ dialogue skills and plotting are fine, but aren’t quite good enough to make all the scenes of talking heads enticing.  Artist Jason Alexander delivers art that’s appealingly gritty for the subject matter, even if his use of photo referencing is more distracting than it should be.

I will say that the volume does have one good twist which is delivered at the end of the first issue.  It helped shake up my expectations, even though they settled back down by the end of the volume.  “Killadelphia” also has its own thoughts on what our present day society needs, though the addition of “…and vampires” to the message doesn’t really spark it up as much as it should.  All of this leaves me feeling cold like the series’ bloodsuckers in the end.  Maybe not enough to completely kill my interest in seeing where this series goes.  Just enough to make checking out vol. 2 less of a priority when it comes out.