My Pretty Vampire


By Katie Skelly (Fantagraphics Books, Inc.)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-020-1 (HB) 978-1-68396-194-9 (PB)

Illustrator Katie Skelly hails from Brooklyn by way of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and caught the comics bug early, thanks to her newsstand owner dad. Her Barbarella-inspired series Nurse, Nurse began after graduating from Syracuse University with a BA in Art History and becoming a postgrad at City College of New York.

Thanks to her inquisitive insights, striking art style and potent narrative voice, Skelly has been the subject of many gallery shows and is a star on the global lecture circuit.

My Pretty Vampire was her first graphic novel. Released in 2017 it is a psychedelia-tinged, torrid terror tome – again inspired by Jean-Claude Forrest but also horror-meister director Dario Argento – and followed by Operation Margarine, The Agency and 2020’s historical reappraisal of an infamous murder-pact Maids.

All her works ask uncomfortable questions about the role and permitted position of women in society, as seen through exploitation genres of mass entertainment, and that’s never been more effectively seen than in this “semi-autobiographical” tome (available in present-worthy luxury hardback and accessible eBook formats) recounting the story of Clover, who was a spoiled rich brat until she was turned by a vampire. It did nothing for her disposition and four years later she is a prisoner in a gilded cage, forced to subsist on ox blood as her controlling brother Marcel keeps her “safe”.

Clover has other ideas: most significantly, feeding on what vampires are supposed to…

Finally, she makes her move, escaping up into the grimy sordid world of daylight, downtown sleaze and booze, drugs and debauched walking snacks. Innocently slaughtering her way across town, Clover is pursued by a canny mortal cop, who fixes all of Marcel’s mortal world problems, but his dogged pursuit is methodical and far too slow…

As the naively innocent killer luxuriates in her freedom, the world inexorably closes in and she realises she needs to change…

Amusingly raunchy, stunningly psychedelic and deviously asking very pointed questions about personal liberty and the constricting power of love as a tool of control, My Pretty Vampire is a vivid splash of vibrant, gory fun every contemplative connoisseur of sexual politics and social inequity will adore.
© 2017 Katie Skelly. This edition © 2017 Fantagraphics Books, Inc.