Comic Book review: The Strain

The Strain comic book 1 cover The Strain comic book 2 cover The Strain comic book 3 cover

Comic Book: The Strain, The Strain: The Fall & The Strain: The Night Eternal

I very much enjoyed the first season of The Strain TV series: A fresh and less common take on vampires, with a great initial suspense and events unrolling. But then, the remaining seasons went a bit sideways, feeling almost boring at times, and leaving me not too satisfied with what looked as a promising script from Guillermo del Toro.

I know that, based on the initial TV script rejection, there are some books, but I haven't read them. But when I found that there are also comics, based on the books (not on the TV series), I had to read them. Spoiler alert: I am happy that I did.

I will review comparing the comics with the TV adaptation. The three comic books correspond to the three textbooks, meanwhile the TV series had 4 seasons, partially because they expanded some characters, invented others, and modified a non-trivial amount of content. At times, the comic felt advancing quite fast, maybe too much if it's your first landing on The Strain. A few characters are given much less attention, but the comics are darker, crueller, and less optimistic. It's difficult to avoid spoilers, so I'll just say that it surprised me a few times, even knowing the basic story (or at least, the adapted story).

The drawings are excellent, colourful, gory, and explicit. There is abundant text (entire chunks must come from the books because as far as I can remember, the TV series say them too almost the same), and the pacing is very rapid; There's almost always something happening, if not multiple things in different places at once.

A highly recommended comic compilation.


Comic Book review: The Strain published @ by

Categories: Comic Book

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