The Supernaturalists

Despite the half-naked, bleeding-from-the-mouth goth babe on the cover, this isn't just another revisionist vampire story à la Anne Rice; it's a revisionist vampire story crossed with a hard-boiled detective story, set in the mid-1920s. Edgar Drake is a rough young cop caught up in a complicated murder mystery; the gorgeous flapper Esme becomes his sidekick and lover in the course of his investigation of the blood-sucking underground. If this sounds like a setup for a series, it is: the graphic novel is already being spun off into a regular comic book. Despite its clever concept, though, the work is surprisingly slow. That may be because Heufemann's b&w artwork is so understated that even scenes of exploding vampires having stakes rammed into their hearts are somewhat blasé, and the many talking-heads sequences drag. Additionally, the convoluted plot takes a long time to start making sense. Neighly has to spend some time defining what his vampires can and can't do in order to create dramatic tension in the story, and Drake never quite coalesces into a believable or sympathetic character. This could have been a terrific retro mystery (the title's similarity to The Alienist is no coincidence), but instead it rambles from one plot point to another. (Oct.)