Comic Review: Incarnate #1 (Radical) by John H.

When the hunter becomes the hunted…

To be fair, I have to come clean, because I can’t hold it back or I’ll seem a fraud. I must admit I am not a fan of manga. To me, there’s just something too childlike or wispy to the whole genre that just irks me. I usually feel as if the characters are too ethereal to last to the final page. Yes, I know I’m psychotic, but just trust me and roll with it.




I am a fan of vampires though, and the masters of the night have always fascinated me in a weird way. Despite their inhumanity, their appeal is a constant reminder of how humans can be twisted by the dark. But despite my never satiated hunger for all things vampire, when they are interpreted in a manga style, all the romance and danger seems to evaporate out of them, leaving them the lifeless husks they try to interpret.

But as they say, there are always exceptions to the rules and believe me I was quite surprised when I read Incarnate #1 by Nick Simmons. I was not looking forward to reviewing this, for reasons I have mentioned above, but as I flipped the last page, I was astonished that I had read through the entire story cover-to-cover in less than 15 minutes. And for me, that’s a good thing.

Nick Simmons’s introduction to this tale leaves us with more questions than answers, but in a good way. When a story leads its readers to care, or be intrigued by the characters, they win big points in my book. The main protagonist, by the name of Mot, is a vampire who has just awakened from a decades-long sleep, and barely recognizes the city he began his hibernation in. He searches out old acquaintances, that once found have grave news about the cattle (i.e. humans) they hunt nightly: They have begun fighting back, successfully mind you, and they are just around the corner…

The manga-style in this book, unlike its many counterparts, did not dissuade me from eating up the pages. The style here seems to have purpose, not just used for popularity sake but as a tool of fluidity. The humans seem blocky and slow, while the vampires are predators that move with unearthly grace, who seem to lift off the page at moments.

I must say Nick Simmons did an awesome job here, with masterful strokes of pen and pencil, both in the art and in the script. There is a slim possibility that this book has made me reconsider my position on manga-style books.

But until then we’ll see how Incarnate #2 turns out, and I seriously can’t wait!

Written & Art by Nick Simmons

9.0/10

By John H.
Senior Reviewer