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The Vampire Gallery - A Who's Who of the Undead J. Gordon Melton Visible Ink Press 1998 When dealing with real vampirism you have to be able to unwind the fact from the fiction. The fantasy from the reality. Over the years, real vampirism has become intertwined with myth, legend, folktales, and a big handful of Hollywood hype. Generally, if it sounds far fetched, like fiction, it probably is. So how do you tell? And how do you know where all the hype and bs came from? Answer - good reference books. The Vampire Gallery by J. Gordon Melton is one of the better ones for separating fictional vampires. They are all there in 500 well indexed pages. From comic books to fiction, to television and movies, all of the fictional vampires of the 20th century appear in this one handy book. The book is laid out in an alphabetic reference fashion by character name. Each fictional vampire has a paragraph or two telling a bit about the character, the plot synopsis, the work in which the character appeared, the publication, the year and where appropriate, who portrayed the character. The book is also very well indexed and cross-referenced so that you can look-up a vampire by either the character name or the name of the book, movie, etc. All in all it is very complete and well presented. So who was Man-Bat and when did he appear in DC Comics and challenge Batman? It's in there - page 269. So is Count Duckula from Marvel Comics - page 149. Want to know more about a book called The Vampire Virus? That would be page 239. Or how about name of the character that actor Anthony Perkins portrayed in a 1989 made for television movie called Daughter of Darkness? See page 109 for the answer to that. One of the most enjoyable things about this book is that it is an easy read. The way it is broken down in short quick informative segments means you can pick up the book, open it to any page and find something interesting. It is not one of those that you have to read cover to cover - to me this makes it just plain fun. I would highly recommend this book as a reference manual on fictional vampire characters to anyone seeking to expand their knowledge on the subject. LA. Judge / nodecaf |