A horrific comic in storytelling device — but in the best possible way. Jarring and detailed artwork, and recommended for fans of this medium and genre.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. For me it was a case of what's not to love. Vamps are one of my favorites, especially when they are presented with a new take. Monstrous vamps have huge appeal to me and that's what these are. The pace moved really fast and had the right balance of story to gore. The art was wonderful. I especially liked the gruesome panels and also covers at the end.

That title! I had to laugh so hard and absolutely couldn't resist requesting the book from Netgalley. Combining the Empire State Building (the 'i' in Vampire) with a Vampire story probably came from a night out in the pubs. I guess, it only works as a graphic novel, because who doesn't want to see that grandiose architecture swamped in blood and engulfed in fire. The drawings absolutely delivered and I admire the artist's cityscape views from fascinating angles, realistic characters, crawling crowds.

Neither the gory story including a romance and a cannibalistic Native American cult, nor the two dimensional characters will draw you into this short work. It is mostly about the amazing visuals (to get an impression, there is a youtube trailer available), including the different cover versions at the end and the very last panel covering the famous workers letting their feet dangle from the struts.

I despise horror stories, but love Vampire gothics, and this work pulled my triggers. Recommended.

This was a pretty standard graphic novel. I liked that the stakes were really high. I also loved some of the art. That scene of the Empire State Building catching fire? Great. The last panel mimicking the famous picture of the builders? Amazing. Overall, though, this fell flat for me because the characters were (quite literally) cartoons. They were so two dimensional, I don’t even remember their names. I never got invested in the story because of this. Also, I hate the tropes of the Black people dying first and the weird Native American death cult. That sucked, in my opinion. I will say that I was also really confused by the ending. It’s pretty solid horror, but I wish it gave more time to developing the story and characters. Thank you for this ARC.

📝Review of 𝕍𝕒𝕞𝕡𝕚𝕣𝕖 𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕖 𝔹𝕦𝕚𝕝𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘

“𝘏𝘢𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘴𝘢 𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘴𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘺𝘤𝘭𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘯. 𝘖𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘭 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘶𝘯𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘩 𝘢 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘮 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥”

Briefly, the graphic novel is about an ancient evil that has been awakened on the 75th floor of the Empire State Building. The city must find a way to eradicate this evil before it overwhelms them, and on a smaller scale a group of friends must find their way out of the building alive

Man, I’m a little torn on this one. On one hand it has everything I like: an ancient evil, hordes of monsters, and an enclosed setting of a tall building that our heroes must work their way down floor by floor to escape from. But on the other hand, I just wasn’t super into it. The background of a possibly real cannibalistic society/vampires was interesting, but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense and didn’t really go anywhere. Overall the story seemed very straightforward. I didn’t really care about any of the characters, and the art was standard but nothing special. A few cool scenes, but overall not super impressive.

One of my favorite parts was all the different covers provided at the end.
+++
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

A group of friends gather at the Empire State Building to say farewell to a friend and to view the sights from the top of the building. The ongoing renovation in the building disturb the great Vampire God from its sleep in the secret chamber at the building. Now, there's a whole army of vampires hell bent on spreading out through out the city while they hunt and turn every one in the building.

It's a cool one, the graphics a bit more than the story. The story is absolutely fast paced, never a dull moment there. I just felt like the whole story was basically a means to get the two main charcters to a predictable end. I would have apreciated a bit more about the origins of the vampires and what their ultimate game was. That said, the sory definitely flew through, there was a lot of action as the characters run up, down, in and, out of the sky scrapper as they try and find an escape from the blood sucking monsters. Definitely some tense, and panic ridden moments there. The graphics were cool, especially the monsters and the Vampire God, I thought it was a different and brilliant take from what you'd expect for a Vampire God to look like. The individual issue covers were really amazing. All in all it was a short, quick, and delightful ride.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the review copy.

The problem with knocking off a vampire story in just a few short issues is that something has to give. Pack it with myth, or gore, or character, or a new metaphor/excuse for the vampiric state, and something else drops out. This book has the new excuse for vampirism, or at least it's new to me. It's not great, though. In fact the myth is a bit of a rum do, when a few trampy types from the New York streets attack the Empire State Building, cos their godhead was bricked up in it by his earlier worshippers. The gore here is, I suppose, OK, although a lot of the book's darkness is from the FBI and others who treat it all as a terrorist attack. No, what we don't get here is character. Just as soon as we meet a few people starting a party on the observation deck, half of them are dead, and just four people in total start the quest for survival we're interested in here. All told it's not bad – the bullish, post-9/11 response to vampires is something I've not seen before, and the spread of events is such that it's not just the one building acting as the stage to the story. But the whole mythology of it all is bunkum, including what we have to assume are certain powers of the Big Bad, and the fact we don't really care whether the leads get out or not is the biggest hindrance. So there's inventiveness here, to some extent, but the page count does get in the way. A slightly generous three and a half stars.

The premise of this graphic novel had me interested, but let me down. It was a thing that just took off and had no stops to help me get a grip on things. The monsters was a kind of let down for me and I am still confused as to what the hell was going on or where they came from. I am sorry, not my cup of tea I guess.

What a page turner! The graphics are top notch and the dialogue is perfect.

Even though it is a shorter graphic novel, it is not short on suspense or horror.

I will definitely be adding this to my physical graphic novel collection. 5/5 suspenseful stars.

Vampire state Building is a short (4 chapters) story about vampire-like creatures.
Without spoiling anything, I can just say that the story was intriguing and a captivating read from start to finish. The drawing is quite good as well and fits the atmosphere fantastically. I really like how everything was explained without the plot-holes usual for stories about the supernatural.
I can recommend the comic to anyone who likes cool short stories, vampires that don't sparkle and some nice mystery action.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Diamond Book Distributors for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.*

Vampire State Building collects the four issues of the hit mini series by French writers Ange (Anne and Gerard Guéro) and Patrick Renault, illustrated by Charlie Adlard, co-creator of The Walking Dead, first published in France by Soleil in 2019.

Terry Fisher is a young man who decides to leave his college life behind, and enlisted to be deployed in Afghanistan. His friends planned a goodbye party for him atop the Empire State Building. Unbeknown to them, renovation works led to a weird discovery in the walls of the building’s 75th floor. Something interesting enough for a VIP unveiling to be planned for the next day. But then, workers accidentally trigger a Gozer type paranormal event, catching the interest of people hiding in shadows all over New York, who then start converging to the tower...

Charlie Adlard did fantastic work on this series. Everything is minutely detailed, from backgrounds to characters, crowds, cityscapes, vehicles, and everything inbetween. His sense of perspective also make for uncanny wide panels. His art is particularly well served by coloring, and an adequate use of lighting effects.

The story itself moves at a very fast pace. A diverse cast of characters with distinct personalities is efficiently introduced in the span of a few pages. This, and all the events I summed up above, happen before the first vampire attack on page 12 of the very first chapter.

Vampire State Building is basically a clever mashup of Die Hard and The Towering Inferno, with added vampires and way more useful cops and federal agents.

The authors didn’t try to hide their sources for inspiration, as they pay hommage to them through the series. A few panels directly lift scenes from Die Hard. Some lines are reminiscent of Aliens or Predator. And, the Cigarette Smoking Man from X-Files even makes a cameo appearance (at least I think so - We only see him from the back in the corner of a panel, but who else would dare having a smoke inside of a New York building, even more so in the middle of a vampire attack ?)

This is a fun and highly cinematic graphic novel I won’t hesitate to recommend to lovers of any of the genres I mentioned in this review.

The backpages of this trade paperback give us a clean cover art gallery, and some Charlie Adlard’s sketches & character designs.

Thanks to Ablaze Publishing, Diamond Books and Netgalley for the ARC provided in exchange for this unbiased review.

Vampire State Building is an entertaining story for fans of the vampire genre. I enjoyed the background art a lot. If you like Vampires and Die Hard this is definitely for you.