Strange Academy: Blood Hunt#1 is a near-perfect tie-in to a larger series, serving to show the world-spanning event's impact on a niche group of characters while tying the plot into the greater thrust of Blood Hunt. The addition of Pia, a young vampire whose heroism will allow the reader to empathize with, is wonderful, and the Darkhold is a fascinating character to include. Daniel Jos Older's writing is pitch-perfect - funny, sharp, and emotionally resonant - while Luigi Zagaria and Eric Gapstur's art beautifully elevates the tale. A worthy investment for fans ofStrange Academy, gorgeous art, or vampire mayhem! Read Full Review

This is my first exposure to most of the characters of Strange Academy. What I got here wasn't my favorite, but it wasn't really bad, either. This felt more like something targeted more towards younger readers, but that doesn't make it particularly bad or anything. That sort of thing just isn't always my favorite. However, one thing I didn't like was the insertion of Spanish words for Germán. I'm a Hispanic, and I very much would like for more Hispanic characters to get more prominent roles in every form of media, including comics. That said, media like movies and television often have a strange (no pun intended) habit of forcing in Spanish words into a Hispanic character's dialogue to hammer home that said character is Hispanic. Now, I'm going to guess Older is Hispanic himself because of the little I've seen and heard about him. So, I'm not trying to say it's a "race thing" or whatever. It's just something that always annoys me, because it almost never sounds natural. I know I went on a rather long tangent about that, but I also want to point out that it didn't really alter my opinion of the book that much. I'm still gonna read this miniseries and hope it gets better from here. more