As implied in The Red Book, “American Vampire” is not a typical story of vampires and the act of hunting them across the ages. With ‘The Miner’s Journal,’ the tale of monsters proves as much, using a book purported to have been once owned by Howard Phillips “H.P.” Lovecraft to delve deep into the author’s signature style of horror in a phenomenal one-shot.
Written by Scott SnyderCover by Rafael Albuquerque
Illustrated by Matias Bergara
Colored by Dave McCaig
Lettered by Steve WandsThe California Gold Rush. Thousands migrate West, and any average Joe could strike it rich with just one swing of his pick. But one unfortunate miner’s attempts to unearth a fragment of gold inadvertently awaken something much worse. Clues to the mystery of the monstrous new villain, the Gray Trader, are revealed in this adventurous one-shot story featuring the stunning artwork of rising star artist Matias Bergara!
While most of the story of “American Vampire” (un)lives, even thrives, on arc-based structure, ‘The Miner’s Journal’ is an anomaly that shows how effectively Scott Snyder can adapt to a single issue one-shot instead. Covering two stories simultaneously through the use of the eponymous journal, Snyder manages to make a story that not only moves the overall myth arc of “American Vampire” forward, but also functions as a narrative which could easily function as a standalone tale for newcomers to the series, or even as a single-issue horror story divorced from any other series at all. that fits within the overarching narrative excellently.
Shifting genres can be difficult for writers, especially within a single series. Dropping one form of horror into another may seem too abrupt or nonsensical, only to be abandoned due to its failure. Thankfully, Snyder excels in this kind of genre shift, as seen in arcs such as the war story of ‘Ghost War’ or the relatively small-town torment of ‘The Nocturnes,’ even if we were to exclude the ‘Survival of the Fittest’ and ‘Lord of Nightmares’ miniseries. As such, the transmission to Lovecraftian horror feels natural, even inevitable as the stakes were raised in the first arc of “American Vampire: Second Cycle.”
With ‘The Miner’s Journal,’ Snyder does not look into a tale of vampire hunters even with one of their number being the principle character of the present day (1954) portion. Instead, it is one of investigation and survival, with someone who does not seem to have the barest level of combat experience delving into matters he does not quite understand. Unlike the stories of Skinner Sweet, Pearl Jones, or others in the overall plot of the series, Gene Bunting’s harrowing experience is more along the lines of a desperate scramble to try and find out information before hopefully getting out alive if at all possible, not a resounding triumph to demonstrate who he can kill during his trek nor how gruesomely it occurs. The same goes for his fellow protagonist for the one-shot, the man who wrote the eponymous journal between 1850 and 1859, William “Dodger” Dodgeman.
The manner of telling the story is a large part of why Snyder is so successful. Over the course of the one-shot, the narrative switches between Bunting’s trip to the Royal Forkes mine in 1954 and Dodger’s experience in that Nevada location during its heyday in the California Gold Rush. While Bunting has at least a vague grasp on what is happening, Dodger had none at all, with two different forms of horror resulting from this disparity in knowledge. Couple this difference with the more mechanical change between pages full of text from a journal and ones with less for the actions of a traditional comic book, and the overall effect is especially nerve-wracking.
In his arrival on the scene of “American Vampire,” Matias Bergara immediately shows his skill at crafting unsettling imagery through his illustrations. While he has subtly different styles between the 1954 and the 1850s portions of the story, the overall effect remains similar, with each one complementing the other. The primary difference lies in the use of shading and detail.
In 1954, with the support of color, Bergara’s pencils are smooth, focused on two things: the isolation of the Nevada desert and the reactions of people within it. Foreboding angles or wide perspective shots give a feeling of being unsafe or even watched in the most innocuous or solitary of places, as well as emphasize the insignificance of the individual in the face of an incredible vastness often written into Lovecraftian literature. Meanwhile, the inclusion of more images to work with than text allows Bergara to use a wider range of emotion, especially when it comes to Bunting’s interaction with other people and/or his environment. While Snyder weaved together a tale of dread for Dodger with words, Bergara solidifies the same for Bunting with visual images, with particular emphasis on the liveliness (or lack thereof) of each person’s eyes to concentrate in on the depths of the uncanny valley without requiring a single word.
Continued belowDue to lacking color beyond the sepia tone of the individual journal pages themselves, Bergara provides story of Dodger and the Royal Forkes with more of a “sketch book” appearance, with perhaps more detailed faces and less detailed clothing than would be normal for artwork elsewhere in the book. Beings like the infamous foreman (whose identity fans of the series would know by that point, but is not stated in text) and the disturbing appearance of his “wife” are given added shadows much like the similar silhouettes of various silhouetted figures. Furthermore, the shadows are all the deeper due to the heavier focus on a descent into madness even if one were to discount the fact that there does not appear to be coloring work on those pages. The lack of much in the way of images to go with most of the journal also do not allow for as much use of facial expressions or body language, with what is seen being inherently tainted by the memory of the in-comic author and artist himself.
Dave McCaig has been the colorist of “American Vampire” since its start (with rare exceptions in miniseries or anthologies), so he definitely knows how to work with the ever-changing tale of monsters and slayers. For “American Vampire: Second Cycle” #5, he took up a color palette that further enhances the feelings of dread and isolation, of insignificance in the face of a nigh unfathomable immenseness, worming the terrifying tale even further into the more terrestrial takes on Lovecraft’s writing. With brown, red, and yellow, McCaig makes Bunting blend into the desert, as if he is naught but a grain of sand in its midst only held apart from it all by the green electronic screen of a metal detector, a collection of dollar bills, or a mundane wall at a gas station. Meanwhile, the deeper, darker blues do distinguish the story from the sepia tones of the journal, but also focus in on sheer, unrelenting darkness that is further emphasized through a concentration on shadows later into the story, deepening the drive into the uncanny to the point that readers may feel as helpless as Bunting himself, glued to the pages in anticipation of what will become of him.
Steve Wands shows why he has continued to be the letterer of “American Vampire” all these years in his focus on the difference between the narratives of the journal and outside of it. Using two completely different styles both in font and overall feel, he manages to make Bunting’s investigation appear deceptively normal while relying instead on unrelenting, constantly increasing dread for Dodger and the others of Royal Forkes.
