Rick Ray's Reviews > Killadelphia, Vol. 1: Sins of the Father

A ridiculous but fun twist on the vampire mythos, Killadephia explores what happens if the second president of the United States became a vampire and what would he look like in modern times. The story follows dual narratives - one of a beat cop mourning the loss of his recently deceased father who was a celebrated detective in Philly, while the other one follows the vampiric John Adams who runs a bloodthirsty cabal seeking to bring hell on Earth. The two stories collide rather quickly as Officer Jimmy Sangster realizes how much vampires were involved in Sangster Sr.'s final investigation, and is soon in the crosshairs of Adams' gang of vampires.

There's some fairly interesting stuff explored by writer Rodney Barnes on the mythos behind the world of Killadelphia - which I enjoyed mostly. The contemporary narrative was actually a bit more dry and obscured in comparison, with the vampires' reasoning for a sudden uprising feeling a little unexplained. I do wish we got further exploration of what it would mean for a Founding Father to have been a vampire, and litigating the legacy of the early presidents through this lens could have been a lot of fun instead of focusing on the modern day stuff. Overall, the story here is a pretty fun time and mostly self-contained into this volume despite some teases for future plot beats. The artwork by Jason Shawn Alexander is great - very atmospheric and the vampire designs are appropriately spooky. Definitely a solid horror season read.