I, Vampire #18

This is not accurate! But I suppose Andrew cradling Virgin Bloody Mary's headless torso with her head resting by the UPC Label might be considered tasteless.

Once again, my stubborn brain would not let me come up with a word. This time it was "tasteless". So I googled "classy antonym" and got it! Ha ha! Fuck you, brain! Also, thank you, Lord Google, for propping up my failing intellect.

Andrew Bennett is currently a horrible, murdering, demonic villain of a vampire and yet he's gone all sad and emo when Virgin Bloody Mary was beheaded by Tig. I guess demons have feelings too. They're just usually squashed down beneath the sadism and the desire to squick everything in sight.

The story picks up with Cain about to pull his ancient love, Lilith, from a portal to Hell opened by Bennett and his buddies. Constantine has failed to stop him. Debbie Dancer is armed and ready to fight. And my beautiful, cute, perky Vampire Tig is being drawn like a monster.

I will never forgive you for abandoning us, Andrea Sorrentino! I hope you burn in hell with Green Arrow!

The narrator whinging on about love is Cain, the ultimate evil or something. He's the pre-vampire vampire, Master of All, First Murderer, Beloved or Cursed by God, depending on how you feel about the gifts of immortality and invulnerability. I guess this is a love story again! That's how it began and then it sort of lost its way but now it seems to want to end as a love story again. Unless it didn't lose its way and I just wasn't paying close enough attention. That's a distinct probability!

Cain isn't just bringing Lilith out of Hell though. Why waste a good Hell Portal, right? He's bringing forth legions of demons to give great ass pain to John Constantine. Although Constantine seems unflappable as usual.

John may be acting unfazed but I think he's secretly excited about this prospect.

Too bad nothing comes of it. The Legions never make it into the basement. Lilith never appears. And John just stands around casually telling everybody in the room that they suck at magic. Apparently using the stone from the Tower of Babel didn't just open up a portal to Hell. It created a portal linking Heaven to Hell. Constantine realizes this is going to be one gigantic cock up, so he decides it's time to leave. He figures the best thing he can do, being the master of the House of Mystery, is to send the House into an alternate dimension so that this fiasco doesn't leak into Earth's reality and cause a bunch of lousy crossovers.

Meanwhile Andrew Bennett and Tig turn into wolves and fight to the death. Andrew Bennett tears out Tig's throat while Joshua Hale Fialkov tears out my heart.

The last good guy left in the House is Debbie Dancer. So now she gets to face off against Andrew, Charles the Magic Vampire, The Van Helsing Accountant, Mishkin, and Cain. Maybe Mishkin will pull one of those Hollywood Dog Moments and recognize Debbie as his best friend which will cause him to turn on the other Vampires. Or maybe the other Vampires will all turn on Andrew once they realize he wants to destroy the world.

Or when Debbie is just about to die, somebody else will drop out of the Gothic rafters to save the day!

Oh Tig! Just don't die! I might be a shallow asshole who cannot love you right now, but I can wait until you're drawn by another artist!

Cain realizes that Bennett has become super dark and moody because he's now a repository for all the vampires that ever existed. Cain still wants to reunite with Lilith, so he releases all the Vampires from Andrew Bennett's body. They fly off as metaphorical bats and Cain finally finds Lilith.

For a green glowing gassy ball, she's pretty cute.

And then that jerk Cain does the dumbest thing ever. He uses Tig's body to bring Lilith back from the dead. I knew I hated this Cain jerk when I first saw him in Justice League Dark. I just knew he would ruin every comic book he appeared in and then ruin my life as well. Now instead of cute band-aided Tig, I have to deal with Lilith, Sorceress Whore from a Frank Frazetta painting. Should I like her? Even just a little bit since a trace of Tig might still be hidden somewhere behind the barely covered body of Lilith?

I'm sure Tig is under that slinky dress somewhere.

Now I have filthy pictures in my head because I said Tig was under that dress somewhere.

Hell begins to shove its gigantic, hate-filled, evil phallus up into Heaven's Portal and Heaven just can't take it. The Van Helsing Accountant disintegrates in the fiery backlash. Charles the Magic Vampire protects himself with the "Protecte" spell. Cain and Lilith hug. And Debbie Dancer hides herself and Andrew behind the shield she brought to the battle. Now that all the vampires have left Andrew Bennett's body, he's back to normal and regretting his recent actions.

He's also turned into Gob Bluth.

Andrew doesn't know how to close the Portal but he figures when in doubt, cast yourself in! He tries to hurl himself into the Portal in his attempt to save the world but he's bitch slapped to the floor by a naked woman stepping out of the conflagration. It's Super Virgin Bloody Martyr! She's come to save the world!

And insult Andrew's ex-girlfriend for good measure.

I, Vampire #18 Rating: +1 Ranking. That "To Be Concluded" note in the bottom is a little bit sad and means that this comic book just didn't have enough Batman.