Undying Love #1 has a typical noir feeling and plot to it. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure it is predictable, but sometimes less complications and a lack of unnecessary twists is a good thing. That is the case of Undying Love #1. You can see the action and character development, even some lines of dialogue, coming from a mile away yet somehow there is still somewhat a sense of satisfaction seeing your predictions coming to fruition. 

The comic is about John Sargent as he tries to save his love, Mei, from a horrible curse. We find out she was turned by the most powerful vampire and Sargent has to defeat him to free Mei. But Sargent has very little assistance in trying to help Mei, for there are many other creatures out there wishing to prevent his actions. 

Now I knew the plot seemed a bit too familiar to me and when I was trying to watch the live-action adaptation of Blood: The Last Vampire I remembered why. In the film, and I assume the anime, our main heroine was also turned by an uber-powerful vampire and she is out to destroy him. So though the plots are similar, they are different enough. First of all, a vampire going after a vampire does not have the same suspense as a human (though one very skilled with weaponry) going after the head honcho of the bloodsucking world. 

The relationship between Mei and Sargent also reminded me a bit of Let Me In. I say Let Me In over Let the Right One In because I feel that the American version had a more cynical view of Abby/Eli. What I mean by this is that in Let Me In her reasons for being nice to Owen are questionable. Is she becoming friends with him because she is lonely or because she needs a new caretaker? Mei is not fleshed out much in the first issue, so I am interested in seeing how she turns out throughout the series, whether or not her intentions with Sargent are pure. 

The artwork is gritty and real, but stagnant. Characters have the same facial expression from panel to panel. There is little kinetics within and through the panels, so the drawings felt more like that, just drawings. They did not seem to flow from page to page. In film there is a technique called Soviet Montage, in which cuts and edits are made not just to change the shot but also to bring out meaning. By just having the same look for a character from one drawing to the next leaves no room for deeper meanings or reading in between the lines (or gutters in this case). 

That being said, I liked the dirty feel of the comic. The characters are shady and so are the locations. It encompasses the tone of noir to a T, including archetypal characters. The only problem I really had with the book reading it the first time was the lack of complexity, whether it be in the art or the story. It did seem to fall flat by the end, though this also could be due to the predictability. Despite this, I was left with a feeling of wanting to continue on with the series and in this way the comic is a success.