Penny Dreadful #1. New Medium.

Penny Dreadful #1 review

As many of you may know Penny Dreadful is a series that just started its third season on Showtime, even this I knew. I also knew it had something to do with vampires and the frighteningly gorgeous Eva Green. Come to find out thanks to Penny Dreadful #1, it’s quite a bit more than goth and vampires.

Penny Dreadful #1 for many fans is probably a little late to the party, but thanks to publisher Titan Comics, at least it’s here. I’m bringing this review to you as a complete outsider, knowing literally nothing about the show and I can say this, thanks to Penny Dreadful #1 I’m actually way more interested in the show.

Penny Dreadful I guess intertwines its stories with Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which is actually really cool. I sat there reading Penny Dreadful #1 and thinking to myself, “this all sounds really familiar” then come to find out the characters I recognized were from Stoker’s Dracula, except for Eva Green’s character Vanessa that is.

As the first issue is a prequel to the show, Vanessa is sought after by a friend Mina who has been kidnapped by a “master” vampire. Vanessa offers her services to help Mina’s father Sir Malcolm Harker find her, familiar Transylvania shenanigans ensue.

New to me but familiar to fans of Penny Dreadful; Krysty Wilson-Cairns, Andrew Hinderaker, and Chris King who I guess are screen writers for the show also write Penny Dreadful #1, which is pretty cool. I learned many a things whilst reading this comic and writing this review.

My interest in Penny Dreadful wouldn’t have even really surfaced had the art of Louie De Martinis not caught my attention. Penny Dreadful had always appeared too goth for me, and it didn’t help that when I randomly clicked on the show I was smack dab in the middle of some deep and drawn out conversation I knew nothing about and couldn’t wrap my feeble head around. But thanks to Penny Dreadful #1 wolves with glowing eyes and deranged vampires looked like something I could get in to.

Curious about Penny Dreadful or a hardcore fan of the show? Then I must say Penny Dreadful #1 isn’t a bad choice, its definitely peaked my interest about the show, and about the entire monster genre it surrounds itself with.