Surprisingly good.
I like many people on this site are not familiar with the vampires of the Marvel Universe, and they seem to be interesting, but i think part of that comes from the fact that they are not, thank God, anything like the Twilight Vampires. I wouldn't normally pick up an issue that focused around Vampires however, with the new X-Men series that is starting this month i thought why not, on to the review...
The Story
I think that this issue is actually quite good, and i was pleasantly surprised by it, This is very much so the prelude to the Curse of the Mutants arc that is beginning soon and i thought that it sets up the Vampires as a formidable foe for anyone in their path, even their own kind as Dracula himself finds out. As far as the actual death of Dracula i strangely enough don't know if i was surprised by who killed him or not, on one hand you kind of see it coming but on the other your left thinking well why? The rest of the story pretty much is just setting up alliances and the cleaning up of the individual clans, i'm interested to see how Namor deals with the Atlantean sect and why he hasn't mentioned them before. As far as the writing goes it, in my opinion, is written quite well and i'm glad that Victor Gischler is going to be writing the new X-Men series, i've never read anything of his prior to reading the death of Dracula but he seems like a good writer (but we thought that about Matt Fraction before he was on Uncanny) i guess the question still remains, how well can he do a large team book?
The Art
Their really isn't that much to say about the art to be honest, i really liked it. Everything was clear and you knew what was happening throughout the issue. Their were a few panels i really liked though and they were the introduction of Dracula himself and the panel where Xarus arrives at Alyssa's room it just looked very dark and twisted., and i thought that the whole murder was done very well.
Overall
If this is what the Curse of the mutants arc is going to be like then i really cant wait. This like i said before is most definitely a must read for anyone who is going to be picking up the new X-Men series. A solid 4 out of 5.
