Life Sucks is a vampire drama written and drawn by Jessica Abel (La Perdida), Gabe Soria (Midnight Arcade), and Warren Pleece (Hellblazer) about that twilight time post-high school and pre-anything else. Dave Miller and Carl share a flat where they barely spend time together but share a love of Mexican soap operas. Dave works nights as a clerk at the Last Stop corner store. He works for Lord Arisztidescu, Radu, a pretty nice vampire boss as far as vampire bosses go.
Buy Life Sucks paperbackDave Miller is a vampire, too. His friend at work is Jerome – a vampire. The goth girls come in each night to the Last Stop – they want to meet and become vampires. Dave has a crush on one of the girls, Rosa, but the girls are just gaga about Alistair, the goth-faux-vampire with pointy, sharp, fake teeth. Dave is, surprise surprise, grossed out by all things vampire, especially blood, and has to drink a fake concoction that keeps him weak without most of the “interesting” vampire powers. This isn’t good because Alistair is quickly forgotten for no interesting reason for vampire surfer Wes Hardy who, more surprises, also likes Rosa. Wes is a charmingly ingratiating dickhead, so the love triangle feels a bit lopsided since we don’t know what Rosa could possibly see in Wes, unless, of course, Rosa is also secretly a manipulative jerk. The plot would be interesting if she were also a dickhead, but she is not, so the most interesting conflict goes out the window.
Dave and Wes make a bet as to who can win over Rosa without using vampire powers. This means, of course, that they do not plan to tell Rosa their deepest, most important secret, which is absolutely dishonest and creepy. This plot point must be ignored if one is going to enjoy the graphic novel. The story actually gets exciting for the final ten pages which is just a tiny bit too late.
Fantagraphics puts out beautiful books and Life Sucks is no exception. The binding, the cover art, and the interior design, all add to a spectacular presentation. Unfortunately, you will have to do a little searching to discover that Life Sucks is a reprint from 2008. It is outdated in its Vamp world in which there are no cell phones; characters peruse video rental shops with “Be Kind, Rewind” prominently displayed; the vegetarian vampire who won’t drink “real” blood; and the vampire lord who is an actually pretty nice dude are all familiar tropes. LIfe Sucks is the movie Clerks with a tiny bit of blood: talking heads, a few pages of uninteresting vampire action, and more talking heads. Rinse and repeat.
