Name: Life Sucks
ISBN: 9781596431072

Jessica Abel

Gabriel Soria

Life Sucks

Sarah Sammis

Life Sucks by Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria with art by Warren Pleece is another of the graphic novels short listed for the Cybils earlier this year. Life Sucks is about a baby-faced geek stuck working the night shift at a convenience store. All he wants is a normal life and perhaps a better job. The only problems: he's a vampire and his boss is also his master.

Apparently there are only two places in the United States for vampires: Louisiana and California. If you're in the Anne Rice club, it's Louisiana. If you're in the Joss Wheadon club, then it's California. Life Sucks is clearly aiming for the Wheadon club. I suppose the Twilight crowd will spark a new club of vampires up in the Pacific Northwest someday given the series popularity but right now Vampires still seem fall into two parties.

As much as I enjoyed Buffy the Vampire Slayer (both the film and most of the series) and most of Angel, I'm truly tired of teenager wangsty vampires speaking pseudo-California slang. In fact, I'm plain bored with vampires. Life Sucks plays with many of the same themes already done to death in Buffy and even more so in Angel. It doesn't bring many new ideas to the table. If you want a fairly conventional teenage vampire story set in California, Life Sucks delivers.

There are a few things I chuckled at in Life Sucks. First of all, there is the protagonist's addiction to Mexican novellas. That's a cute detail. I liked the practicality of keeping vampires on the graveyard shift since they probably won't be killed during a conventional hold-up. I liked Warren Pleece's artwork. He makes the neighborhoods and towns in and around Los Angeles recognizable. Nice illustrations though were not enough to keep me turning the pages with enthusiasm.