My Rating
“Blood of Innocence – Chapter 03”
The Superstition Mountains, 65 miles east of Phoenix, Arizona, night has come to the desert and with it the rise of a vampire biker gang known as the Road Disciples. The cave in which they sheltered was a temporary refuge, as many of them were, but their luck was about to change. Yesterday, the vampire outlaws had kidnapped a young high school girl they believe to be prophesied in vampiric lore as the Scarlett Redeemer. The plan – exchange the girl for amnesty with Cormac Praxus, lord and guild-master of the clave.
Daylight in suburbia, a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of Phoenix, a large police presence had just departed from the home of Bly, the kidnapping victim and daughter of the recently slain Dr. Theodore and Alisea Pharis. Inside, CSI officers have begun marking off the bloody scene of gore-splattered walls created by eviscerated bodies strewn over multiple rooms on the main floor of the house. This was no simple murder scene. Someone was trying to send a message.
Connie and Randy, detectives with the Phoenix PD, arrive just before noon to investigate the possible ties with the previous day’s kidnapping event orchestrated at the downtown shopping mall. It was Detective Connie’s theory that either the two men in the Lincoln Continental who engaged the group of bikers in an attempt to rescue the high schoolers, or the biker gang themselves, had arrived earlier that day to grab Bly Pharis, but discovered the girl had already left for the mall.
Connie’s partner had a different hunch. It was just possible that the girl, and her love struck boyfriend, had murdered the parents in an act of defiance. For the girl had just learned she was adopted. Was this motive enough to kill?
As the two detectives inspect a message written in blood on the Pharis’ living room wall, another investigator strolls into the scene. The man introduces himself as Special Investigator Javier Montero. The name immediately rings a bell with Detective Randy Bellamy. Where had he heard that name before? In a few moments it would come to him.
Reviewer Notes
Where was I when this series was released? I believe I was getting out of comics around 1993. Too bad because Scarlett would have been on my pull list for sure.
Jim Fern’s art is serviceable here, as many of the DC Comics titles were in the early and mid 1990s, but the real draw of Scarlett is the story by Tom Joyner. Vampires are roaming the outskirts of humanity when godlike aliens fly around the skies saving people. I love the underbelly of any comic book world.
If you are into vampires and television shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, check this one out. Each book in the series is super cheap, so you won’t break the bank by collecting it. I’m giving issue two of DC’s Scarlett four out of five stars.
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