I was perhaps not the best choice to review this. I mean, I love the current boom of modern vampire novels but I am also not a fan of Laurell K. Hamilton's perky, Nike-clad heroine, Anita Blake. I read the first several novels in Hamilton's long-running series years ago and just couldn't get past her repetitive style of writing, her tiresome placement of Nike endorsements or growing passion for soft-core pornography. At the heart of the Blake series, I believe, is a good collection of stories, but while Hamilton may be a good storyteller, she's not a very good novelist; somewhere between her original ideas and the printed page, the story gets buried in bad writing.

But, while I could no longer force myself to slog through Hamilton's increasingly long and sexually-driven books, I had high hopes for the new graphic adaptation by Marvel Comics. With the text whittled down to its essentials, filtered through the pen of an adaptor and enhanced by colorful visuals, the story might find a better voice.

Unfortunately not. While adaptors Stacie Ritchie and Jess Ruffner have retained the essence of the original text, the resulting tale is cluttered, rushed and often confusing. Brett Booth's art falls just short of being beautiful, too -- but with Anita's lips pumped full of collagen, hair threatening to rival Medusa's for invasive animation and thighs that put a running back's to shame, it's just too damn distracting to help move the story along. All of Booth's women have football-player thighs, actually, and many of his men can be separated from one another only because of their differing hairstyles.

I'm afraid Anita Blake still pales in comparison to many of the vampire-themed heroines storming the literary stage these days. This adaptation is unable to lift her above her creator's limitations. Still, I don't think Nikes were mentioned in this version anywhere, so it has that going for it....