DC vs Vampires #1 - Raising The Stakes, Ha Ha
Andrew Bennett, DC’s main heroic vampire, stumbles towards the Hall of Justice in the middle of the day with grave warnings... Unfortunately, he’s hit by a car while crossing the street, which knocks his blankets loose, which in turn sets him on fire.
Luckily Hal Jordan happens to be present and he makes himself useful for once by using his ring to save the vampire, before taking him inside to get some medical treatment and hear what he has to say...
...While escaping the vampirised members of the Legion (Cheetah, Grodd, Scarecrow and Riddler are all confirmed as vampires), Andrew stabs Eddie with the syringe of Luthor’s blood, only a little amount of which causes the undead Riddler to disintegrate.
Travelling by day to avoid the vampire sleeper agents, Andrew made his way to the Hall of Justice, and after hearing this news, the Wonder Twin present says they should tell the rest of the League right away... which to Andrew’s alarm contradicts Hal’s story that he’s the only member around as the rest are off-planet.
Hal’s a vampire, which he gruesomely demonstrates by manifesting a giant blender and turning the unfortunate Wonder Twin into a people smoothie. The Worst Green Lantern uses his ring to set Andrew on fire to try and get confirmation that he didn’t share his information with anyone else, which Andrew says he didn’t as Hal reduces him to ash. Hal then disposes of the pureed Zan by pouring him down the sink before continuing his ruse.
But, in the Batcave, it appears that Bennett was lying, and that he actually for a note warning what’s going on, and the vial of Luthor’s mysterious blood to Batman before getting to the Justice League’s HQ.
Oof, the Hal reveal was a lot more gruesome than I was expecting, but makes a degree of sense considering one of his default abilities is being able to shield himself from environmental damage (hence how he’s able to fly through space etc.), thus helping to diguise his new vampire nature.
While this is another horror themed out of continuity book, thus far DC vs Vampires is notably different from its predecessor DCeased, as while that book was more of a take on the zombie apocalypse genre this is more of a paranoid, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers-type thriller as its not immediately clear who may have been vampired yet.
And while the “blocking out the Sun“ thing might seen a touch silly, this was potentially what Dracula’s plan was going to entail over in the Netflix Castlevania show according to the Count’s son Alucard. He said that he saw plans in his father’s study for flying machines which release chemicals that can block out the Sun, which would have furthered his plan of destroying all life on the planet by killing all the plants and things in addition to the creates that relied upon them.
Currently pondering what might be up with Lex’s blood that make it poisonous to vampires. Kinda leaning in the direction that his uses of exposure to Kryptonite has effectively made him radioactive at the best of times, and that chugging his vital fluids is probably as bad an idea as him carrying around a fist-sized lump of the space rock in his pocket for years was.
Not particularly down with Diana and Clark potentially being vampires, as she’s divinely empowered and Clark is a living solar battery. Heck in a preboot book his blood once literally made a vampire explode when it tried to eat him. A similar thing happened with John Constantine back in the day as well, when the King of Vampires attempted to eat him... only for John’s demon-tainted blood to act as a corrosive liquid to the monster... as did John’s pee, as he gleefully killed the vampire by urinating on it to death.
The Demon Knights version of Shining Knight, Ystin, was almost turned into a vampire briefly, only to be cured by exposure of the Holy Grail which they had previously drunk from many times previously (hence why they were thousands of years old even before the Middles Ages setting of the story began). Curiously, Ystin’s holy-power infused blood makes demons explode when they trying to drink their blood, but the vampire that infected them seemingly had no problem. Probably due to the vampire in question being the First Vampire or something, I can’t remember if they explained it.
