Blood & Water
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Blood & Water was a 2003 five-issue horror comic book miniseries written by Judd Winick and illustrated by Tomm Coker, with covers by Brian Bolland. It was published by Vertigo Comics from March to July, 2003, with cover dates of May to September, 2003. Each issue was priced $2.95 in the United States and $4.95 in Canada. It concerns Adam Heller, a young man with terminal illness whose friends offer to save his life, but through an unusual means that may come with a price.
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[edit] Full credits
- Writer: Judd Winick
- Artist: Tomm Coker
- Colors: Jason Wright & Digital Chameleon
- Covers: Brian Bolland
- Letters: Kurt Hathaway
- Editors: Mariah Huehner & Heidi MacDonald
[edit] Plot
Adam Heller reflects on the past several years of his life. He had it all when he was eighteen, having been a track and field star, and class president, and had a pretty girlfriend. He contracted Hepatitis B at birth due to his mother’s heroin use, but its effects were relatively mild, and his life was mostly problem free. But a case of food poisoning when he was twenty gave him Hepatitis A, which affected his kidneys and shut down his liver, turning his urine brown, his stool white, his skin yellow, and causing Adam severe nausea. Put on a transplant list, he was forced to drop out of college. He went on a number of medications, whose side effects included flu-like symptoms, diarrhea, fatigue, dehydration, jaundice, and water retention in the lower half of his body that gave him a grotesquely distended abdomen. The severe fatigue forced him to walk with a cane. As the story begins, his doctor has just informed him of a inoperable hepatoma on his liver. Because of this, he has been taken off the transplant list, and since chemotherapy would kill him, he has not long to live.
Adam’s best friend Joshua, whom Adam has known for five years, arrives at Adam's San Francisco apartment. He and his “some-time lover”, Nicole have looked after Adam and supported him during his illness. Adam tells Josh the news. Josh says he can help. He tells Adam that he is a vampire, and that despite looking like a man in his twenties, he is forty-six years old, having stopped aging at 22, when he was “made”. Adam is naturally dismissive of this assertion, so Josh calls Adam from a pay phone outside Adam’s building, having run down three flights of stairs and dialed the phone in half a second. He then instantly reappears in Adam’s apartment, clinging to the ceiling, startling Adam. Nicole then appears as well, having entered just as stealthily.
Adam is frightened, but Josh and Nicole try to explain to him the true nature of vampires. They are not affected by crosses or daylight, do not sleep in coffins or lack reflections in mirrors. They are sensitive to light, however, and wear sun block and sunglasses regularly. Though they eat regular food, they do not have to, as their digestive systems do not absorb nutrition, and excrete it in the same form as it was ingested, making chewing all the more important. They do drink blood, but only animal blood, which they purchase at butcher shops, slaughterhouses, supermarket meat counters, and through vampire contacts. Human blood is highly addictive, and turns vampires into irreversible psychotics, requiring the other members of the vampire community to “take them out”. Vampires are immortal, never get sick, and possess heightened senses and five times the strength of humans, but can die if they bleed to death or experience massive tissue loss. Vampires also have an instinct they call the “clear sight”, that acts as a type of heightened flight-or-fight response. They also enjoy the ability to emit pheromones that affect people in a multitude of ways, such as pacifying aggression during a confrontation, or attracting sexual partners, an ability referred to as “the musk”.
Josh and Nicole tell Adam that many public personalities have been vampires, but it is frowned upon because not aging in the public eye would be suspicious, and requires such figures to fake their deaths. Nicole adds that she, for example, is 278 years old. Adam asks why they never told him all this in the year that he has suffered medically, and they say that their clear sight gave them a sense that they shouldn’t turn him, for fear that it might not work, but will do so now that they know he’ll die. Adam agrees to let them turn him into a vampire. After tying him to a bed, they give him a gallon of fruit punch mixed with their blood. After three hours of convulsions and hallucinations, Adam is turned, and the ills suffered by his body have completed disappeared.
Josh and Nicky take Adam out on his first night on the town. They warn him to take it slow, as vampires are at their weakest when first made, but Adam leaps off the roof of his apartment building, surprising them. Adam enjoys his new life, the powers he has, and the sex that he hasn’t had in three years, which is now afforded to him by the musk.
One night, after Nicky has gone to Paris, Adam and Josh are walking home. Adam departs, and as Josh is walking up the street, he realizes he’s being stalked. He takes refuge on top of a building, but is attacked by an unseen assailant. Adam wakes up in bed, thinking he heard something, and Josh crashes through his window, severely mauled, his left forearm severed. Because vampires, if not cremated within 24 hours of their death, return as emotionless zombies, Josh begs Adam not to let that happen to him, and dies. In Paris, Nicky senses Josh’s death, and screams. She returns home and lashes out at Adam in her grief, asking him why he wasn’t with Josh, demanding to know how anyone could’ve killed a vampire.
Adam and Nicky take Josh’s body to a wooded ceremonial plot about forty miles outside of Santa Cruz, where a gathering of friends, acquaintances, and other vampires who sensed the rare death of a vampire have assembled for Josh’s funeral ritual. A large bald vampire with a tattooed face named Malcolm greets Nicky, telling him that only another vampire could’ve killed Josh, and that a unit of the Taveen, a sort of royal guard of the vampire race, is already investigating. Malcolm is the oldest living vampire, and the greatest hunter-tracker among them, and Nicky asks if he will aid them. He says he is no longer Taveen, and is done hunting vampires. Adam excoriates Malcolm for this, and for his behavior, Malcolm strikes Adam to the ground. Adam responds with a strike that sends Malcolm flying through the trees, much to the shock of the crowd, who wonder how a month-old vampire could do this to one of the Ancient Ones, especially Malcolm. Malcolm says that Adam is “old blood”, calling him “Tribe”. Nicky is horrified at this, and the other vampires flee in terror.
Nicky explains to Adam that thousands of years ago, a sect of vampires developed that, unlike other vampires, feasted on humans, and later, other vampires. They were called Tribe. Their practices altered them physiologically and mentally, becoming ferocious creatures whose strength dwarfed that of normal vampires. Unlike normal vampires, they procreated, and their children were mostly abandoned, murdered or devoured. They eventually turned on each other, and a myth began that they fell into hibernation, and would only be awakened by the smell of their favorite prey: one of their own. It’s been feared that some of the Tribe’s abandoned children would be found and raised by humans, their true nature remaining dormant as long as they did not feed on blood. Adam is apparently a descendant of a child of Tribe, and when Josh and Nicky made him, he not only became Tribe himself, but a dormant member of that race awakened and came for him, attacking Josh first because Adam’s blood smells like that of his maker’s. Nicky says they have to run, but Adam feels that this crisis exists because of him, and that they must stay and fight the Tribe.
They return to San Francisco, waiting for the creature in Golden Gate Park. Adam confesses this is all his fault, as he never got food poisoning, but had been doing heroin for a year, and contracted Hepatitis A from a dirty needle. Nicky says they would have made him anyway. Suddenly, they are confronted by not one Tribe, but three. Adam and Nicky fight them off as best they can, and are joined by Malcolm, who tells Adam that he will help, but that he and Nicky must kill them, for he will not. The Tribe leader tells Adam they wish him no harm, but were awakened by him, and merely feeding. They do not wish his death, but need him to mate in order to procreate, telling him that their blood has made him what he is. Adam says he’s nothing like them, and kills them. After burning their remains, Malcolm leaves. Nicky tells Adam that she can’t see Adam for a while, that she needs to grieve Josh. She kisses him on the lips, jokingly adding that since he’s the only vampire in existence who can procreate, she might return to him one day.
[edit] Reaction
Don MacPherson of thefourthrail.com, reviewing the first issue, was surprised by the range of Winick’s writing, stating that Winick’s strong characterization was the common element in his humor, biographical, and superhero comics, and now showed in his horror work. He commended the stark, textured realism of Tomm Coker’s art, and the surreal tone added by Jason Wright’s colors. MacPherson was impressed by Winick and Coker’s depiction of Adam’s hepatitis, which with Josh and Nicky’s offbeat characters, added a mature, twisted sense of fun to the story. [1]
Randy Lander, reviewing the second issue, referred to the vampire material as “great”, praising Josh and Nicky’s humor, and the concrete terms with which Winick described things like the taste of the blood concoction, the way vampires live and eat, and the anecdote about vampire celebrities. Lander praised Coker’s art as “moody but not too dark”, able to convey both the humor and the horror, particularly Adam’s hallucinations as he is made. [2]
Rick Dakan of Pop-Comics.com also saw the artwork as “very strong and moody” and perfectly suited to the story, but thought the story’s pace was a bit slow. He nonetheless thought Winick handled the exposition of issue #2 well, and enjoyed it as much as the first issue. [3]
