Zombos Says: Very Good
Three survivors…one hundred ninety-eight dead…(Flight 753 from Berlin)
"I don't know what to tell them, Jim. We've got something brand new here as far as I can see. I might as well say they were all hypnotized by the Amazing Kreskin." (Everett Barnes, JFK Hazmat Team)
It's Romania, 1927; it's New York City, present day; it's vampirism wreaking the usual apocalyptic havoc, or soon will, in this adaptation of Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's The Strain. Scripter David Lapham and artist Mike Huddleston keep it tense, fast-moving, and engaging for this first issue. Huddleston's terse strokes are greatly aided by Dan Jackson's colors, especially for sustaining the dark tone and ominous mood.
In 1927, Abraham listens to his Bubbeh (grandmother) as she relates the story of Sardu the nobleman, who carried a wolf-head's cane and was a giant in stature. He loved children until the day he entered a mysterious cave after finding everyone in his hunting party dead. After that, the children began to disappear, one by one.
In present day JFK, a plane lands, but then silence falls, and all the shutters are drawn. JFK's hazmat unit, headed by Everett Barnes, and the CDC are alerted to a possible situation. What they find is the beginning. Abraham, now grown up and owner of a pawn shop, watches the news on television, and steels himself for what he seems to have been waiting for all his life as he reaches for the same wolf's head cane his Bubbeh described in 1927. How did he get it? Why is almost everyone on that plane dead?
This issue makes you want to find out, and I don't say that too often where first issues are concerned.