If I were to ask you what you knew about the Vampire the Masquerade Tabletop RPG you probably wouldn’t know much (unless you are already a die hard fan of the series that is). From White Wolf (one of the major groups of Tabletop RPGs right now), Vampire is as you think it is… a series about vampires (and other creatures of the night).

And yes, like Everquest… huh? Oh. Yeah.
Everquest DOES have a Tabletop RPG version, if you are only familiar with the PC series of games you probably didn’t know that (I didn’t know that until recently). It’s under the Sword & Sorcery banner of games, if you’re wondering where to find them.
And like Vampire the Masquerade, both have comics. Overpriced short comics in this prestige format square bound print or whatever. The only difference being Vampire was done by Moonstone in 2002 while Everquest was a better known title from DC/Wildstorm (in, oddly enough, 2002).

But we’re not talking Everquest here, we’re talking Vampire.
Nosferatu is about a beauty pagent winner named Athena Ortiz.
She tries to be beautiful, and is beautiful… even though she is hiding a very very ugly secret. Her family, you see, is quite dysfunctional to an extreme. So is it any wonder she ends up spending time with the vampiric undead, forming lifelong undead bonds… getting her own personal demons out of her inner closet to exorcise them… then she’s turned and gets back at daddy dearest. Yeah.

The artwork is nice, and the story is actually engaging as you read about this gal and ultimately her inner demons which drive her to become a creature of the night.
If you are not a fan of the series I don’t see you being “turned” by this comic, and at a price of $7 for only so few pages I really don’t see anyone but either fans of White Wolf, Vampire the Masquerade, or of vampires in general getting this.

On the bright side I have to dig deeper into Moonstone.
I always did want to review Kolchak : The Night Stalker (hope it’s based on the original series and not the recent revamp which I never did like very much).
Oh, and if you aren’t into vampires or Werewolf the Apocalypse you’ll be pleased to learn Moonstone has a license for a modern revamp of the classic “Phantom” (you know, as in the character who was portrayed by Billy Zane in that live action movie if I remember right), classic monsters of old in “Moonstone Monsters” (like the Mummy for instance), and a “pulp” title in “Noir Fiction”.

See what you’re missing out on by not looking outside of the box and at smaller companies wares? Hmm… that seems to be the theme of this week’s reviews in a sense, looking outside of the box (and the traditional major companies of comics and manga slash AmeriManga). As for this book? Let’s say it gets a 4 out of 5 with a warning label attached. It’s good, but if you are not a major fan of either the RPG or the overall concept of vampires then you are probably not the audience this book is out to appeal to.

If you are? Then enjoy, people, enjoy.