Miss Lucy wants nothing more than to be special, even if that means allowing Lady Violet Travesty to turn Lucy into a vampire so she can join a super selective vampire cult. But Lucy’s plans are thwarted when Lord Byron – yes, the Lord Byron of Don Juan fame – comes along to rescue her. When the highly narcissistic and oblivious poet misconstrues Lucy’s intentions with Travesty, he invites Lucy to join him on his quest to hunt vampires. Along the way, many misunderstandings occur.
Written and illustrated by Emily McGovernCover by Emily McGovern
Colored by Rebekah RarelyMcGovern delivers an anachronistic and humorous, though highly niche, story with “Bloodlust & Bonnets.” This satire, which is packed with deceptively simple yet impressively expressive artwork, is both its own love letter to and a critique of the writings of the romance era. As with the writings it so lovingly imitates, the drama abounds. The story, however, loses its way at multiple points and based on the tongue in cheek character dialogue, the creator would have the reader believe this is intentional.
Vampires kick the story off and are present throughout – they use their high society status to hide in plain sight – but they quickly prove they are not the story’s point of interest. That honor goes to the three main characters: Miss Lucy, the poet Lord Byron, and Sham, the vampire hunter. But despite the charming tomfoolery they provide, none of the characters provides a strong sense of grounding. As the recurring joke goes, the characters interact, get distracted by each other, and continuously lose their way. So too, goes the story.
This intentional misdirection is a difficult and limiting concept to employ; not all readers will enjoy starting a story that doesn’t seem to be moving in any real direction. That’s not to say there isn’t progress or a plot; the story is simply meant to tease the complex character lists and overlapping and interweaving storylines of romance era novels. For all that the story makes references to the writing conventions of the time, it walks a thin line between humor and repetition. At 200+ pages, the types of jokes that are used throughout can get old and the story can get lost in its own humor.
Additionally, those who come into this story without a strong knowledge of Lord Byron may find themselves quickly frustrated. Jokes based on the life and writings of Lord Byron are sprinkled throughout, and are sure to delight those with a baseline of knowledge about him. But for those readers who are less familiar, they will largely get the sense that they are missing out on an inside joke.
Besides the vampire aspect, McGovern also employs some fantasy in her inclusion of a psychic eagle capable of transporting humans vast distances, a succubus, and an unknown magic that allows Lord Byron’s castle to be sentient to some degree.
Aside from the more modern use of language, the story additionally seems to eschew the times in which it takes place in its inclusion of certain characters. In addition to numerous background characters who are people of color, Baroness De Bri (BB) is a black woman who has made her money by targeting wealthy men and helping them along to their untimely deaths. Other characters are less obvious. Sham and Virginia’s ethnicity and race go unidentified, though both do present as darker skinned than Lucy or Byron.
McGovern also includes queer characters in her period piece. Sham is gender ambiguous for most of the story, being referred to as both a “she” and a “he” without offering any clarification. It should benoted, however, that on page 104, Sham is seen wearing chest binding as they shave while sitting near a water well. Throughout the story, Lucy and Sham’s relationship cleverly and teasingly references the typical tension-building scenarios that put romantic interests at odds with each other until the very end, when audiences can safely delight in the inevitable pairing.
Historically, Lord Byron himself was known to be bisexual, even if he lived at a time where such things weren’t labeled or much discussed in the open. Here, McGovern goes to no lengths to hide his interest in either men or women, with Byron lusting after Lucy as well as the fictional Lord James Sponge.
Continued belowThe artwork itself is misleading in its simplicity, channeling the aesthetic of the type of art one might be unsurprised to learn was produced in Microsoft Paint. It is consistent with McGovern’s own webcomic My Life as a Background Hufflepuff but also takes on a more polished but equally charming reference to Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half artwork.
The line work is varied in weight and completion, with many lines mere fragments surrounded by other gragments, but always steady and with an appearance of intentionality. The colors, which draw from both warm and cold palettes, are bold and often both bright and highly saturated. The characters themselves are not given faces, save for eyes and impressively expressive eyebrows. But even without the full makeup of a human face, McGovern is able to easily convey emotion through the presence or absence of the eyebrows, and the use of hand gesticulation. Interestingly enough, it’s not as though McGovern isn’t able to provide more detail in her work. Simply look to the background, in the carpet or wallpaper as examples (page 38).
The story is also dialogue heavy at times and the pages can become crowded with speech bubbles (look to pages 28 and 29 as an example). The font is generally easy to follow, though it becomes more difficult to decipher when Napoleon the psychic eagle speaks. However difficult it can be to determine what the eagle is saying, it is nice to see that the French natively spoken by him remains untranslated, either via a glossary or asterisked sidenote.
An amusing tale, made all the more amusing by its absurdity, “Bloodlust & Bonnets” is a charming story that will do well with those who enjoy their classics of the romance and regency era spiced up with a touch of paranormal and fantasy.
