Pop culture always needs vampires, and thankfully, we are in a bit of a vampire renaissance right now. From the dashing Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3, to Marvel’s Blood Hunt comic book event, to season 2 of the Interview with the Vampire show, to the upcoming Blade video game developed by Arkane Lyon, Rodney Barnes and Jason Shawn Alexander’s Killadelphia, to Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu film out later this year, fans of vampire media are eating well, quite literally. And with the second installment of Dark Horse’s Carmilla graphic novel series by Amy Chu and Soo Lee out now, this summer just got so much better.
Carmilla: The Last Vampire Hunter by writer Amy Chu (Deadpool, Poison Ivy) and artist Soo Lee (Thundercats: Cheetara, Red Sonja: Black, White, Red) picks up from the ashes of the first graphic novel, Carmilla: The First Vampire, which came out last year. The story is set in 1996 and follows a young lesbian Chinese American named Athena Lo, as she wrestles with her familial legacy as the last man standing in a long line of vampire hunters. It wasn’t long ago that Athena was just an overworked social worker trying to help her community in Chinatown. Now, she sees the world in all of its monstrosities.
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Athena’s search for answers about her family’s history takes her to San Francisco’s Chinatown, where she stumbles upon what can only be described as a vampire turf war. As she embeds herself into the local Asian American vampire community, Athena learns the truth of her family origins.
This graphic novel’s predecessor, Carmilla: The First Vampire was one of the best comics of 2023, and Carmilla: The Last Vampire Hunter proves that Chu and Lee’s story is horror comics’ next big heavy-hitter. Don’t let the graphic novel format fool you, The Last Vampire Hunter is a thrilling ride from beginning to end, and left me hungry for more. For my fellow fans of vampire media who would like a comparison, The Last Vampire Hunter brings together the sense of conflict and community of Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, paired with the badass fight scenes of your favorite Blade story or movie, all within the specific cultural and historic lens of Chinese communities in America.
As I said earlier, vampires are solidly back en vogue in pop culture, but no other contemporary vampire story is doing it like Chu and Lee’s Carmilla. The creative range of the book’s creative team is limitless, as the book nails its visceral fight scenes alongside its quieter moments of brooding melancholy. Whether it’s drawing gore in the heat of battle, monstrous children, or the heartwarming image of a Filipino nukekubi watching Friends on television, Lee’s artwork moves seamlessly between the emotional and narrative beats of the story. Lee’s kinetic linework is absolutely gorgeous, and imbues The Last Vampire Hunter with a sense of virtuosic elegance. The Last Vampire Hunter confirms Chu and Lee’s commitment to telling a grounded and gritty story about a Chinese American vampire hunter, mixing the personal with the operatic stakes of the supernatural.
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From a writing standpoint, Chu uses the history of San Francisco’s Chinatown as a jumping off point for the cast of characters Athena comes across in the story. Chu is no stranger to writing about Asian American history, having written the first of a series of middle-grade graphic novels called Fighting to Belong! about the subject earlier this year. The Last Vampire Hunter feels informative but not didactic in its approach to reckoning with the violence that people of Chinese descent have faced in San Francisco.
And to speak frankly for a moment, Chinatowns in North America have rarely ever been portrayed accurately in media. Instead, they’ve largely been used to represent an idea, usually related to moral corruption of some sort. They’re relegated to lines like “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.” This ignorance is both laughable and inescapably ugly.
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On the other hand, Carmilla: The Last Vampire Hunter proves that it has the narrative legs to document the vibrance of Chinese American communities across the country, not just in New York City. This is also not to say that Chu and Lee present Chinese and Chinese American culture with a hagiographic lens. In fact, The Last Vampire Hunter provides a refreshing critique of patriarchy within traditional Chinese culture. Its story has never felt more urgent, and I look forward to seeing how it expands in future installments.
With its eye-popping fight sequences and nuanced ruminations on queerness and Chinese American history, Carmilla: The Last Vampire Hunter is a worthy addition to our vampire Renaissance today. The graphic novel’s compelling artwork and world-building are perhaps to its detriment, as I finished the story wishing it was at least twenty pages longer. I found the characters of The Last Vampire Hunter fascinating, and wanted to spend more time with them.
The graphic novel format suits the goals of Carmilla as a series, but with all of the exciting ideas planted in The Last Vampire Hunter, I find myself hungering for one-shots, webcomics, or other short form stories set within this world to tide me over until the next graphic novel. The ball is in your court, Dark Horse!
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