Vampires Get Graphic

From James Patterson's MAXIMUM RIDE to Stephenie Meyer's TWILIGHT, more and more popular series are being adapted into the comic/manga form. With all of the vampire craze going on now, is it really any surprise that the series responsible for giving birth to the brooding, I-Hate-Life vampire is getting it's day? Have no idea what I'm talking about? It's Anne Rice's INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, of course!

Yes! Yen Press, the same guys that put out MAXIMUM RIDE and TWILIGHT in their pictorial form will be doing it with IWTV coming next fall. But thank the vampire gods it won't be told from constant complainer Louis's point of view. I remember reading the book and watching the movie when I was 11 and hoping against hope that Killjoy would go and get a tan already for how much he hated the fang. Nope. This time around it's all from Claudia's perspective. Now the article doesn't say if it'll be movie Claudia or book Claudia (an age difference of five years, 11 versus 6, respectively) but I think it'll have a greater impact with the latter. A six-year-old telling her story about becoming a vampire? Sure she hated it but she was an evil little thing. She had Louis's morose attitude about vampire life with Lestat's will. That's a mighty combination.

I'm actually looking forward to it. I think it'll be a really good story from Claudia's perspective. While I did like IWTV, I couldn't stand Louis. Even in the movie, I wanted to smack Brad Pitt. GO GET A TAN! I actually couldn't make it past THE VAMPIRE LESTAT. In fact, I couldn't even get all the way through that one for how overwritten it was and from what I'm told, the series just gets more heavy handed. Granted Anne Rice is known for that, and for her lack of editor so it's really no surprise. While the article didn't mention retelling the remaining books in the series (obviously not in Claudia's POV), if they do I'll be more than happy to pick up those abridged, color versions over the door stoppers.

The funniest thing I found about that article was that Rice was all for others playing with her works because she was done with THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES. It's now a series in her past. "I'm writing something new right now, so I'm comfortable with other people's adaptations." So says the woman so adamant against derivative works that she sicks her lawyers on anyone that even deigns to mention the name Lestat in a context she doesn't like. So does this mean she's going to be opening up to IWTV fanfiction in the near future? I think you have a better chance of a purple pig flying out of your ass. But the comic? I'll take it for now.