An Ending That Staked Me In The Heart — Reviewing ‘Vatican City’ #3

Welcome to the table,

I have been looking forward to the third and final issue of Dark Horse Comics’ Vatican City since the moment I finished issue #2. Writer Mark Millar and artist Per Berg have created this fast and frantic story about the fall of humanity at the hands of what seemingly is a world wide legion of vampires. They have laid siege to multiple countries and invaded Vatican City to free their imprisoned giant vampire queen to unleash a new age upon the Earth where Vampires reign once more.

It’s been quick, brutal, and the lore building has been immaculate up to this point. The last issue gave us glimpses of the strange lost history of humanity where vampires ruled the earth and the vampire giantess queen being unearthed from the secret vaults beneath the Vatican.

So with this whole thing having such a cool setup, I was not sure how they were going to draw it to a close in the final third issue, but I was fully invested in what I hoped would be a fantastic finish to this story.

I find myself finishing Vatican City #3, and as much as it pains me to say this, I’m deeply disappointed. Let’s get into it.

The last story ended with the human survivors holding the giant vampire queen, still slumbering, shrouded, and wrapped in bricks of C4, hostage. The leader of the vampires, Karl, and the spokesperson of the human resistance, a guy by the name of Guido, agree that the remaining humans can take a vampire-provided convoy out of Vatican City.

They’ll travel to the airport, where the humans will leave the vampire queen’s body for the vampires to collect and presumably awaken, and the humans will fly away to China or some other part of the world where the vampires have not yet taken over.

It’s a great setup. I’m thinking the vampire queen is going to wake up, or the humans are going to escape and then the vampire queen is going to be awakened and usher in a new age of vampire rule over the planet. The book has been fast and loose, so I know with 25 or so pages left there is going to be some kind of cool quick cut style exploration of what this deal is going to result in.

<<<Spoilers Follow>>>

What actually ends up happening is there is a nun who talks to Guido about the nature of good and evil in a handful of panels. Then in a move seemingly counter to her personality up to this point, she holds her hands out the window of one of the cars of the caravan, shaking the bomb trigger around the vampire queen like a rolled up newspaper being shaken at a cartoon dog.

The car she is driving hits a bump, the trigger falls onto the street, somehow hits the ignition button, and boom… blows up half the convoy and the vampire queen causing the vampire army to rage and launch an attack on the humans.

It gets even more messy and chaotic, and not in a good way, as the vampires rip up all but the car containing the nun, Guido, and two kids. At some point the nun gets ripped from the car by vampires but the art becomes such a cluttered collection of lines on the page that I honestly missed it happening.

I have loved Per Berg’s work on this book up to this point, but it feels like something is not connecting here. I don’t know if they were rushed or if something had to be changed or if the book had its number of issues cut down, but what was stylish in the first two issues kind of falls apart in the second half of this third issue.

Guido and the two kids crash the car into the doors of St. Peter’s Churches, and scramble out once more, being on holy ground where the undead can’t step. The vampires pile up a bunch of stuff around the church and set it on fire planning to burn it to the ground. If it is no longer holy ground, they can kill Guido and the kids.

The kids tell Guido it’s time to pray. It’s like one of those made for church VHS movies (where the talking vegetables tell you to pray) kind of moments. In this story, it really just feels so out of place and I know that is unhinged saying that about a book called Vatican City, but I did not expect what amounts to a message from someone’s church mom to come out of the mouth of these kids. Guido, who was asking two women for kisses earlier in this issue and being kind of a smart-ass action hero, lead tells the kids “you lead” in regards to the prayer.

It feels so rushed and weird.

<<<BIG BIG Spoilers Follow>>>

Then, in the sky… a nuke from Russia hits and turns the vampires and Vatican City to dust. Moments after the nuke hits, and we are talking minutes tops, the kid opens the door to the cellar of the church they were hiding in to see a landscape covered in dust and sand and the kid says “I told you god would look after us.”

I’m fully capable of believing in a secret of army of vampires, of a giant vampire queen, of hidden ages of the earth where vampires ruled, of a secret value where magic and such was kept under Vatican City. I am not capable of believing that moments after a nuclear strike that turned buildings and cars and… well, everything … to dust, there is not heat or radiation or instant death for a child in jeans and a t-shirt standing in the middle of it like it’s just a day at the beach.

The story jumps three days. The two kids and Guido are eating from candy machines and armed with crosses, holy water, and weapons and heading west with a Saturday Morning Cartoon level of glee. There is a line about “lets get moving before the sun goes down.”

Friends, I was all in. It could have be so many things and I would have cheered and told you it was rad and told everyone I loved it and said it with my whole chest.

What bugs me even more than this sloppy wrap up is that it feels like a haphazard copy of Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan‘s The Strain trilogy of novels and the show based on said trilogy. For those who don’t know, The Strain tells the story of vampires who take over the world, use nukes to blot out the sun, and then get nuked by a father and son. At some point, there is a big cross in the sky as a space station burns up through the atmosphere in some kind of biblical “sign” because the vampires were actually the spawn of a fallen angel.

I hate how much I dislike this last issue. I really wanted to be a champion of the work but it feels like they had two really solid issues and then shoehorned an ending into it and it tanks what could have been some seriously cool storytelling. It felt more like a Netflix movie pitch or really involved storyboarding and not the absolute banger I thought this was going to become.

I have a lot of guilt rating it this low, but I am not going to lie to you, dear reader, when I don’t like something and while I often cringe when I tell people to skip the final chapter of a show or a series, this is probably the first time I can think of in a long long time than I am going to suggest you just check out the first two and leave this last one unread.

Even if you pick it up to complete your collection don’t bother with it and let your own imagination fill in the blanks in what would have otherwise been a beautifully told fast and frantic fang fest about the fall of all things.

Until next time, I hate having bad things to say about books, but holy heck gang… this one really let me down.