Review by Frank Plowright

Over the past two True Blood graphic novels, Michael McMillian has collaborated with Annie Nocenti, but Here We Go Again is all his own work. He has provided the epilogue stories to those previous books, with the one for Shake For Me, creatively moody, and his first full length solo effort is a highlight of the run. Daphne Landry worked at Merlotte’s from midway through season one of True Blood until the end of season two, when she died. Except now she’s back. In world of vampires, werewolves and shapeshifters, this is perhaps not as exotic as in ours, but still not an everyday occurrence, so is it really a contrite Daphne glad to see everyone?

Outgoing artist Michael Gaydos contributes a few pages, but most of Here We Go Again is drawn by Beni Lobel. His style is more action oriented than Gaydos, so works well with a cast that need to be involved in action and violence, and he delivers his best in the final chapter when an odd army attacks Merlotte’s. Lobel’s good at defining the cast the way the actors look, but in places all that work copying images gives the pages a static quality, with some faces frozen into odd expressions.

Turns out it’s not just Daphne that’s back. McMillian’s plot works well in flowing suspicion about the cast by playing on what they really want while others maintain a distance, figuring if something seems to be too good to be true, then likely it is. The suspense is maintained until the halfway point, when McMillan introduces something that might seem more at home in a Batman graphic novel, but it delivers what the TV show couldn’t, at least not with a hell of an increase in the budget, and that’s good. So’s the story overall, up there with Tainted Love as the best True Blood graphic novel.