Super Suckers is entertaining. It intentionally looks like an Archie Comic (old Archie), but has this air of maturity to it. In some ways it reminds me a little of High School USA, but not as raunchy and with vampires. Because Vampirism is the newest STD sweeping college universities. The story starts off following Kelly at her sorority getting ready for a blood drive. Her boyfriend that talks like a bad Dracula movie comes and breaks up with her. He’s leaving the country and wanted to say goodbye. Heartbroken she heads to a bathroom to cry and finds another woman crying over a break up… turns out to be over the same guy. They also make another discovery of what they have in common… they’re vampires now. Kelly and her new friend Jess are an unlikely pair, which is what makes them work so well together.
Soon after the girls’ discovery, they run into Stewart who knows they’re vampires. In fact, he knows basically everything there is about vampires because he was supplying their ex-boyfriend with blood and for some reason he decided to tell Stewart everything about them. They laugh him off because they don’t want to pay for blood and Stewart is known as the kid who pissed his pants in class. Apparently due to a double feeding from their ex-boyfriend.
The story goes on and both girls discover that they’re extremely horny… or maybe they both just happened to have fallen in love again and want to suck the blood of their love interest. Read it how you will, but I took it as Vampires are horny all the time. Kelly’s love interest turns out to be a Vampire hunter which puts the girls into an interesting position.
There are also commercials to the comic. That is the theme of the publisher “Sitcomics, it’s TV you read!” The commercials reminded me MAD Magazine in that the commercials are over the top and have art that would be at home in MAD. They’re humorous, but also a bit too long. They also all happen at once which honestly takes you out of the story for too long.
Which brings me to the biggest problem with this first issue. It’s too long. The story really doesn’t need to be this long because the concept is simple. You know that the girls are going to have to confront the vampire hunter and figure out how to not kill or infect their love interests. It should all move pretty quickly, but it doesn’t. There’s a lot of exposition and not just from Stewart. Usually I don’t complain about an extra-long issue, but this one seems intentionally bloated for the page count which damages the content. That and when you’re miming Archie, well there’s a reason that Archie has short issues… no one can stand to read a long ass issue.
If it was a tighter story it would have nailed the Archie formula. It has mature humor, but it manages to stay safe by implying it more than showing it or directly saying it. It’s just a shame that this first story is too long. It might have worked better to have the commercials break it up. I get that it’s like a real commercial break, but you still have to play to the medium it’s in… comic books. When I stop reading the main story for four pages and then go back into the story. Well it’s easy to forget where I was before the commercial break. It’s an interesting and fun concept, but it doesn’t quite work in the comic medium the way it’s presented here.
I can’t say enough good things about the art. I mean it’s so Archie that it hurts. The noses, eyes and hair are the biggest influence. If you can nail those three things, you just have to come close to everything else. The art is great and adds a lot of humor to the story. The coloring is about the same as an Archie comic as well, but I found it to be a bit better and fuller looking.
I would read another issue of Super Suckers, but only if it was shorter. There’s an “or” there as well, that being that if the story could actually fill the page count and keep it interesting. If it was just another inflated story though I would likely tap out sometime after the commercial breaks. Otherwise this is an entertaining comic that has some homage and uses a classic art style to craft a different story than the art style is associated with.
Score: 3/5
Super Suckers #1 Writer: Darin Henry Artist: Jeff Shultz, Various Colorist: Glenn Whitmore, Various Publisher: Sitcomics Price: $5.99 Format: Ongoing; Digital Website