REVIEW: Silver: Of Treasures and Thieves Book One
Silver: Of Treasures and Thieves Book One
By Stephan Franck
Abrams ComicArts/224 Pages/$24.99
When you think you’ve seen every interpretation of vampires, someone comes along to prove you wrong. In this case, Stephan Franck offers us vampires on a heist caper successfully mixing gothic horror and crime noir.
Frank, a supervising animator on The Iron Giant, wrote and drew the story across four volumes over the last decade or so. Now, Abrams ComicArts has wisely seen to it to collect these into two handsome volumes, the first of which is now available.
Franck starts with characters and legacies directly tied to Bram Stoker’s Dracula so there are many familiar names, including Vlad Tepes himself. But we focus mainly on other players as the criminals gather to raid a castle in European. Our protagonist is James Finnigan seeking bar of pure silver that is coveted by the castle infested with vampires, who have long sought this relic. That the bar and information is found in the crypt of the Harker Foundation, beginning connections between Franck’s world and Stoker’s.
A gang of human criminals is contrasted with the vampire cult, corrupted living versus the undead masquerading as the living, with immortality warping their worldview. To them, immortality isn’t necessarily a great thing, and it has left them with ennui, lacking a purpose beyond drinking blood to survive.
Franck does a nice job delineating his characters, letting us into their lives in bits and pieces, notably during an extended train trip to the castle. There are a variety of types that any good heist story requires, complete with a vampire among them who has a separate agenda. The vampires themselves are a little less diverse but no less interesting.
The page construction and artwork make reading this a pleasure, as does the heavy paper stock that allows every line to reproduce with clarity. This story is for any good fan of adventure, crime, and horror as the three genres converge into something refreshingly entertaining.
