Unicorn Vampire Hunter #1 is a comic written by Caleb Palmquist and illustrated by Daryl Toh. A young girl moves from the city to the marsh to live her wizard uncle. This is a supernatural fantasy comic that has strong drama, notable violence, and intriguing characters. The leading lady here is Jezebel, she is an adventurous young girl who has gone from city life to country living. Her uncle Seamus is a powerful wizard with forever young puppies who lives near dangerous creatures. The unicorn wanders around the dark forest. This story begins with a look at Jezebel’s early life in the city before her transition to greener pastures. Her impulsiveness leads to her exploring the deep woods where she comes across a roaming vampire. When he tries to attack her he is gored by a charging unicorn. This takes place in a world where industry is prominent and there are factories and airships. There are also orc-like creatures. The violence here is a bit bloody with some gore. The pacing is steady with a webcomic-like tone as it dramatic and emotional. Most of the intense moments are due to drama though a few are violent. The dialogue is mostly conversational with good back-and-forth and lengthy storytelling from the characters. There are no word-heavy pages. This is an interesting debut issue that focuses on fleshing out the characters and showing us exactly how they got to where they are.

            The art here is drawn in a lightly-cartoonish modern style with thickish outlines and well done shading. The color palette is very medieval with a lot of brown, tan, and gray. For scenery we have large fields of grass and a forest thick with trees that doesn’t let in much sunlight. The main location for this story is a castle with many different areas and rooms from the courtyard to an isolated tower even to the throne room. Most of these places look lived in/used. The backgrounds usually show the surroundings from the spaces between stones to the smaller branches on the trees. The expression level here is around average as one key character tries to maintain a hard look. Emotions we’ll see here are happiness, confusion, anger, unease, shock, and determination. The faces have a decent to above-average amount of detail so all the expressions come across clearly. The mystical effects are bright and sometimes transparent. The weapons used here include swords and clubs. The violence here can hit hard with light blood and some body part-separating gore, along with actual goring. The action scenes come in bursts of two pages max and they flow well.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like supernatural fantasy stories that star two black people and a unicorn and that has strong drama and notable violence then this is for you.

“What would this comic’s film rating be?”

R. Blood, gore, gruesomeness.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“Everyone loved you because of your magic.”

 

Physical Link: https://calebpalmquist.squarespace.com/store/unicorn-vampire-hunter-1

Digital Link: https://calebpalmquist.squarespace.com/store/unicorn-vampire-hunter-1-pdf

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/giraffe-design/unicorn-vampire-hunter-1/description

***IN-DEPTH COMIC STATS BELOW***

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 34

Violent Pages: 7, for 21% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 0, for 0% of the comic

 

**The levels below aren’t necessarily maintained throughout the whole comic, but they were definitely reached**

 

Violence Level – 3

“Wasn’t no tussling at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta hit somebody.”

“I’m getting charged with how many counts of assault?”

“This was a tournament arc.”

“All my life I had to fight.”

 

Gore Level – 4

“The only thing leaking out your face is tears.”

“Looks like somebody spilled some ketchup.”

“Might need to soak that up with a bath towel.”

“That isn’t supposed to be outside the body.”

“This is a slaughterhouse.”

 

Death Level – 3

“And everybody lived happily ever after.”

“We might have gone to a couple funerals.”

“It just LOOKS like a serial killer was here.”

“Yeah this was a tragedy.”

“Think Gettysburg.”

 

Porn Level – 1

“Everybody kept their clothes on.”

“I guess it was too hot for a bra.”

“Sometimes you got to let everything air out.”

“This is like late night Cinemax in the early 2000’s.”

“Oh. This is porn.”