Woodstake: Three Days of Peace, Music and Blood

Woodstake #0-5

by Darin S. Cape, Felipe Kroll (Illustrator)

A blood-soaked mashup of vampire myth, rock history, and the counterculture of the late 1960s

Woodstake is a wickedly clever spin on the Dracula legend, reimagined against the backdrop of the iconic Woodstock festival of 1969. When a vampire descends on the summer of love, a generation of hippies is forced to survive three days of peace, music, and blood in this darkly funny, genre-bending thrill ride. A razor-sharp blend of satire, horror, and ‘60s nostalgia, Woodstake offers a wildly original story brought vividly to life through the bold, evocative artwork of Felipe Kroll. It is a must-read for fans of classic rock, genre mashups, and blood-soaked storytelling.

With its unique blend of Woodstock-era atmosphere and vampire horror, Woodstake stands out as a wild, cult-horror crossover that feels both nostalgic and fiercely original. This gripping graphic novel delivers a character-driven narrative paired with a bold visual style that brings the late '60s to life, complete with period-authentic detail, psychedelic flair, and sharp dark humor. Ideal for readers of horror comics, supernatural thrillers, and music history, Woodstake bridges genres in a way that is fresh, immersive, and unforgettable.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Music, Horror, Historical Fiction, Vampires

192 pages, Paperback

Published April 14, 2026

About the author

Shawn Hainsworth, AKA Darin S. Cape, is the founder of SHP Comics. He writes and publishes comic books, novellas & shortstories and screenplays, and is a documentary filmmaker. The Disciple is the first volume of The Hand of God. This story is an expansion of the comic book series, The Killing Machine: Book One of The Hand of God.

Other comic book series include Woodstake and EroTech.

Woodstake: Three Days of Peace, Music and Blood
When a vampire descends on the Woodstock Festival in 1969, hippies, anti-war protesters and music lovers try to survive three days of peace, music and blood in this comedy of horrors. The first novella in this story will be released in January, 2024

EroTech: Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers, and Sex Robots. What could go wrong?
Join Samantha Jenkins as she rallies her team of misfit engineers and out of touch managers to release a new sex robot on time. The only problem is that the robot doesn't know when to quit.

Darin is also the author of a number of award-winning screenplays, including an adaptation of EroTech as the short film, Technical Support starring Courtney Pauroso, Davey Johnson and Aparna Nancherla.

Reviews

[Charlie Hadley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woodstake: Three Days of Peace, Music and Blood Darin S. Cape

★★★☆☆ A Stylish, Fast-Paced Vampire Tale with a Strong Visual Identity

Woodstake: Three Days of Peace, Music and Blood is an interesting and visually striking graphic novel that blends real-world history with classic horror tropes. The realistic art style immediately stood out to me—it strongly reminded me of the cutscenes from the original Max Payne games, which is absolutely a compliment to the illustrator. That grounded, cinematic look paired with the graphic novel format gives the story a unique and engaging tone.

The story offers an intriguing take on the events surrounding Woodstock, and I really enjoyed the music references woven throughout, which helped capture the spirit of the era. There’s a fun mix of counterculture atmosphere and supernatural chaos that keeps things entertaining.

That said, the narrative does feel a little jumpy at times. The frequent, quick scene changes mean some moments that could have benefited from more development don’t quite get the space they deserve. The ending also left a bit to be desired, though that may have been an intentional creative choice.

Overall, this is a quick, easy read that can be finished in about an hour. It leans into familiar vampire tropes and delivers a solid, stylish experience, even if it doesn’t fully explore all of its ideas. I’d still be interested in checking out more from the author in the future.

Early copy provided by NetGalley.

[Mads · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why does 3D-traced art continue to plague comics?? It looks absolutely awful here. With a premise like this, you need to crank the campiness up as high as it will go (dynamic poses, exaggerated action, big colors, etc). Using 3D models with realistic colors is shooting yourself in the foot, making everyone look wooden and bland (or like you just took screenshots from a video game).

The characters aren’t much better — either boring or unlikable, or both. For as fun a concept as this, the execution is abysmal. Don’t waste your money.

[Waldkauzz · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Woodstock Festival 1969 as a Dracula retelling: It's quirky, quick-paced, and yes, you see a hippie version of the count.
If that's enough for you, you may kindly stop reading and check out the graphic novel.

Anyway. Reading this is like watching a movie through disjointed clips from TikTok or Instagram Reels.

Story first. It's predictable, a bit of a bore, and the characters remain quite one-dimensional, not that you need much more in some horror slashers. It does not have a proper resolution.
My bigger problem was with the 3D modeled-then-traced art. It's stiff, the character's compositions and movements are unengaging, and its overemphasized, detailed and realistic textures make it seem rather cartoony at times. It's not AI art, but I feel like I am looking at AI art.
But for full credit, some chapters are better made than others (compare chapter 2 and the last one) and the artist's own website has some beautiful art pieces.

​1.5 stars. Thanks to NetGalley and publishers for an ARC for an honest review.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Crowd, the Creature, and the Cracks in Utopia
How “Woodstake” turns Woodstock from a countercultural dream into a field of exposure, appetite, and dread
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | March 24th, 2026

“Dracula at Woodstock” is the sort of pitch that invites an eye-roll before it earns a second look. Darin S. Cape’s “Woodstake” knows this, and one of its pleasures is that it never mistakes the elevator line for the finished thing. The book’s intelligence lies elsewhere. Its real subject is not the novelty of dropping a vampire into 1969, but the shape of Woodstock itself: a sprawling, permeable mass of bodies, appetites, slogans, mud, music, confusion, and lowered guard. In “Woodstake,” the festival is not backdrop. It is operating equipment. Anything built to exploit access could hardly ask for a better machine.

Cape opens with a prologue that treats the curse less as lore than as freight: compact, ugly, and already in motion. The vampire’s earlier American history arrives in compressed form, centered on Lucy Westin and the men who fail to save her, then carried forward through bloodline, injury, and deferred revenge. These pages do not aim for elaborate psychology. They move with the cold efficiency of an heirloom nobody wanted but nobody managed to bury. By the time the book jumps to 1969, the creature arrives not just with hunger but with timing. Woodstock offers what the old farmhouse never could: scale, anonymity, and an almost ideal ratio of openness to oversight.

Into that human press steps Jon Harper, a young San Francisco magazine hustler heading east with friends, ego, and the usual late-’60s bundle of idealism, self-invention, and professional hunger. Around him gather lovers, doubters, local cops, veterans, and a doctor with inherited knowledge and better instincts than anyone else in Sullivan County. Cape lays out the machinery briskly: a disappearance, a corpse, a sheriff under suspicion, a doctor beginning to recognize an old pattern. Then the book makes the move that lifts it above the premise. What first looks like a missing-person story in a crowded place turns, panel by panel, into a horror story about the crowd itself.

That shift in scale is the book’s best idea and the source of most of its force. “Woodstake” grows sharper the moment it stops using Woodstock as a witty setting and starts using it as an alibi. The point is not simply that there are many possible victims. It is that the festival’s best ideals make those victims easier to reach. People are already prepared to trust strangers, drift off, lose track of time, peel away from their friends, and call the whole experience liberation. In a place like that, a short absence scarcely registers as absence. A wandering body is not suspicious. It is the local custom. The vampire does not need to batter his way in. He only needs to move with the flow.

Felipe Kroll sees, more sharply than the script sometimes writes, what this setup is for. His pages make the festival feel both expansive and absorbent. Faces flare into focus and then slip back into the crush. A body can be isolated without ever seeming truly separate from the pressure around it. These scenes do more than reconstruct period texture – the denim, the smoke, the overbright psychedelic wash, the communal muddle, the sweetly anarchic mess of too many people trying to have a transformative weekend at once. They show how easily a public mood becomes cover. A field becomes circulation. A backstage pocket becomes a blind spot. A trailer or cabin just off the main current becomes the hinge between spectacle and secrecy. There the comic quits explaining itself and lets the image do the thinking.

That matters because Cape’s script, on its own, is not the book’s great seducer. He writes for velocity: clear enough to guide the eye, too plain to linger in the ear. Captions carry compression, dialogue keeps the story moving, and most lines exist to preserve legibility while the plot changes gears. The diction shifts among a few serviceable registers – gothic exposition in the prologue, loose counterculture banter, forensic exchanges between doctor and sheriff, blunt declarations once the horror breaks open. The sentences are usually short to medium in length, direct, functional, and more interested in getting the reader there than in making the trip verbally lush.

That utility helps the comic move, but it has a cost. The dialogue often lacks friction – not enough tonal differentiation, not enough surprise, not enough verbal grain. Jon, Nina, Artie, the sheriff, the doctor: each is clear in outline, less vivid in the mouth. The book knows where everyone stands. It is less certain about how differently they sound while standing there. Emotional beats land in narrative terms without always cutting very deep into character. When fear, loyalty, jealousy, or love need stating, they are generally stated. They do not often arrive sideways, or with the unruly texture that makes a voice memorable after the page is turned.

Still, it would be a mistake to judge “Woodstake” as though it had set out to be a prose-forward work and merely fallen short. Its wager is different. Cape writes like someone constructing a sturdy frame and trusting the rest of the medium to furnish the room. Kroll rewards that trust. Where the script marks danger, the art gives it weight. Where the dialogue hurries, the panels linger just long enough to let fear, intoxication, seduction, and confusion occupy the same space. The book’s expressive center lies less in its sentences than in the slight drag between what is said quickly and what is shown slowly.

That drag is structural as much as visual. “Woodstake” understands that page design is not ornament but timing. The comic organizes attention by continually tightening and widening the lens: one face, one body, one whispered exchange, then the full churn of the festival again. Page turns do more than deliver surprise. They change the status of what came before. Confusion becomes evidence. A trip becomes a breach in control. A gathering that first seems protective reveals how neatly it can swallow an incident. This is not formal peacocking. It is crowd management with fangs. The book knows that a festival creates not just atmosphere but plausible deniability, and it uses that knowledge with unusual discipline.

That is where the pages stop making the case and simply prove it. “Woodstake” turns a famous cultural myth into a story about exposure. The very qualities that make Woodstock seem utopian – collectivity, permeability, the thrill of being among strangers and briefly remade by them – are the qualities that make it legible to a creature built to exploit appetite and lowered defenses. Cape and Kroll do not belabor the point. They simply keep showing how easily one body can be peeled from the mass, and how quickly the mass closes over the gap.

The book gets extra mileage from the way it entangles psychedelia with coercion. Many works set in this period use altered consciousness as décor, a shorthand for visual excess or historical vibe. “Woodstake” does something slyer. Here, intoxication is both risk and accidental instrument. It can blur judgment, but it can also crack the surface of control, interrupt enthrallment, or make denial harder to sustain. That is a richer use of the period than the standard lava-lamp treatment. The comic does not merely drape horror in psychedelic color. It asks what happens when a culture already committed to altered perception encounters something that can weaponize altered states.

A few comparisons help, though only a few. Like “American Vampire,” this comic likes to splice old blood into American mythology. Like “30 Days of Night,” it knows that environment can do half the monster’s work. But “Woodstake” is less interested in enclosure than in saturation. Its horror does not come from being trapped with too few people around. It comes from being surrounded by too many. The crowd is not there to decorate the action. The crowd is the action’s enabling condition.

That choice gives the book a wider reach than its premise initially suggests. Without forcing contemporary relevance, “Woodstake” ends up feeling quietly diagnostic. It is interested in what happens when openness becomes a liability, when visibility becomes vulnerability, when the very systems built to promise release make extraction easier. One does not need to drag the comic into some overworked present-day analogy to feel that charge. It emerges organically from the pages. The book understands, with a chill that arrives almost sideways, that permissiveness and exposure can be cousins.

The climax keeps faith with all of this. As Jon’s fate comes clear and the vampire’s ambitions widen from one enthralled body to many, the action moves through cabins, trailers, and backstage thresholds – those off-ramp spaces where a public event quietly sheds witnesses. Cape still favors tactical clarity over flourish, but the staging works because the book has already taught us how this environment behaves. By then, what is at risk is no longer only one relationship or one life. It is the festival’s conversion from gathering to resource. That is a nasty, memorable escalation, and the comic earns it.

The last pages are better than some of the dialogue carrying them. Morning arrives, and with it the expected vampire promise of release, but the feeling is not triumph. It is glare. The sunlight is too white, too exposing, the kind of morning that makes faces look newly mortal and every surface a little overexposed, as if the world itself has been left out too long. The survivors make it through, though survival here has the bleached look of something paid for rather than won. A cleaner ending would have made the book smaller. This one leaves a bruise.

The cost of all this efficiency is easy to feel. The script and the characters do not always rise to the level of the concept or the images. Some of the surrounding material – Vietnam trauma, local authority, generational distrust, the politics of the counterculture itself – registers more as pressure than as fully worked substance. The plot also leans, once or twice too often, on a repeated rhythm of separation, search, regrouping, and renewed danger. None of this undoes the book. But it does mark the point where a strong comic stops short of becoming a great one. There are moments when one wishes for more verbal contour, more inner resistance, more sense that these characters possess lives not wholly subordinated to the beautifully efficient machine moving them around.

Even so, “Woodstake” knows exactly what it can do, and returns to that knowledge without vanity. Expression here is not evenly distributed, but it is effectively distributed. Cape handles folklore, pacing, and route-finding. Kroll handles dread, scale, seduction, and the queasy beauty of altered perception. Together they make something smarter than its elevator pitch and stranger than its plainest lines. The comic understands that a high concept survives only if somebody on the page takes it more seriously than the reader expects. Here, the art does that, the structure does that, and sometimes the script catches up.

I’d rate “Woodstake” 84 out of 100, which translates to 4 out of 5 stars: a strong, visually intelligent graphic horror novel whose clearest achievements are formal and atmospheric rather than verbal, and whose limitations are real without being fatal. What lingers is not a single scare or a single speech. It is a field of people open to one another, full of noise and weather and hope – and somewhere inside that field a thing that understands openness better than they do.

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

My Selling Pitch:
A Dracula retelling set at Woodstock that may as well be AI-generated.

Pre-reading:
Love a horror graphic.

(obviously potential spoilers from here on)
Thick of it:
Oh, I love the art style. All that lighting!

The werewolf transformation art is bomb.

The art really changes in quality between panels. They look like half-finished video game renders. It almost looks like manipulated AI images.

Dracula on LSD.

It’s really hard to tell which character is which.

None of these racial slurs are needed. You’re not being of the time. It’s a graphic novel. There's barely any text.

Post-reading:
Don't waste your time with this. The story isn't developed beyond what if all the characters in Dracula were hippies. It's purely set dressing and there's no thought given to how that would change their motivations. It's almost unreadable. The art is muddy and awkward and looks AI-generated. I really did like those werewolf transformation panels at the very beginning, but the characters’ hair is constantly drawn without thought given to how weight would affect it. The panels are so dark and dingy, and the character designs are so similar that it can be hard to identify who’s actually in the panel. Female characters exist only as sex objects with ridiculous proportions in certain panels. For a graphic novel that has almost no narrative text to it, the book still managed to include multiple racial slurs and even makes an aside that it's just for the historical accuracy! It's Dracula on LSD. You're not concerned with historical accuracy. Get real. Even if you're a vampire and music fan, I don't think you should pick this up. It really is that bad.

Who should read this:
Dracula retelling fans

Ideal reading time:
Summer

Do I want to reread this:
No

Would I buy this:
No

Similar books:
* EC Blood Type by Corinna Bechko-graphic novel, vampires, horror, revenge thriller
* Lucy Undying by Kiersten White-Dracula retelling, horror, queer, revenge thriller
* Groupies by Helen Mullane-graphic novel, paranormal horror, historical, music industry, queer
* Deep Cuts by Joe Clark-graphic novel, historical, music industry

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Rod Brown · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hey, man!! What if, like, a vampire!! went to Woodstock??!!?? Freaky, right???

Astonishingly boring, actually, because having a concept and having a story to tell are two very different things.

An unnamed vampire -- who might be Dracula, I guess? -- decides to create a vampire army using the throngs of people at the 1960s music festival, which just happens to occur at the very site he has spent decades healing from a previous setback. But a Van Helsing descendant, a deputy, and a couple of hippies sort of stumble around kind of slowing him down and/or thwarting him?

Not interesting enough, you say? But, hey, look! Jimi Hendrix!!! Well, sure, he doesn't fight vampires or anything as he passes through on his way to the stage, but he was definitely there. YepYepYep.

The prose frequently gets purple, and people don't behave like normal people would in similar circumstances. After meandering forever, the story stops abruptly with plenty of room left for a sequel I would never want to read.

The art by digital artist Felipe Kroll evolves over the course of the book from a bland, muddy, and splotchy painted style to something that becomes ultra-detailed and gives uncanny valley vibes throughout the back half of the book. I don't know if the photorealism is achieved by manipulating actual photographs or by utilizing AI, but it becomes totally distracting and off-putting. There are also several anachronisms in the art in the back half of the book, like a modern day combat vest and several vehicles manufactured in the 21st century, making me more strongly suspect an AI boost.

I wanted a fun vampire adventure in a familiar setting, but this was a humorless and dreary slog. Is there a vampire pun for Fyre Festival?


Disclosure: I received access to a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.com.


FOR REFERENCE:

Contains material originally published in single magazine form as Woodstake #0-5.

Contents: Prologue -- Chapter 1. Going up the Country -- Chapter 2. My Generation -- Chapter 3. Freedom -- Chapter 4. Bad Moon Rising -- Chapter 5. Purple Haze

[Little Batties · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woodstake: Three Days of Peace, Music and Blood left me feel rather 'meh' about the story as a whole. At first, I was excited to read a new vampire tale, especially in graphic novel format, but it left me rather disappointed as a whole.

The story surrounds a vampire that's moved to the U.S. from the home country, and they are being pursued by a Van Helsing. It is not a new concept, but the author did draw inspiration from the time period it was set in, which added a fresh twist to the classic tale. The idea of a vampire wreaking havoc on Woodstock was one I thought would be cool. Sadly, it missed it's mark. It came off more as comedic than horror. I expected more death and carnage with a setting like this.

What was an interesting choice for this story, and I honestly cannot decide if it helped or hindered the novel, is that the illustrations felt like they were straight from a video game. It was a little odd, and it did feel like I was watching a video game playthrough more than I was reading a graphic novel. They were nice illustrations, vivid and at times funny, but it still wasn't an amazing story overall.

Thank you NetGalley and SHP Comics for giving me an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story starts off with Jack falling in love and marrying Lucy in 1927, only for her to be targeted by a vampire and turned. Van Hellsing kills her, but the other vampire is still at large. Many years later, Jack remarries, just for the same thing to happen again. Jonathan, a young man with a passion for music, attends a festival in the area. All hell breaks loose when vampires start attacking the attendees, and the sheriff is under the vampire's mind control. Jonathan must find a way to escape with his friends with the help of the son of Van Hellsing.

I think this was a very new and interesting vampire setting. I have never come across one where vampires attack a music festival. While I do think that the concept was great, the execution was not as well done. The only fleshed out character is Jack, who ends up dying partway through the graphic novel. The rest of the characters just seem surface-level and one-dimensional. While I do understand that it is more difficult to develop characters in graphic novel format, it is possible, as it was with Jack. That being said, I did enjoy the story and it was a fun, quick read.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a few things I enjoyed about this graphic novel. First, I like how it tied to Dracula by Bram Stoker, but was it's own completely different take. Instead of being set in the victorian age, it took place during Woodstock. It gave a lot of different POVs and you never knew what was going to happen next. If you like classic vampire tales taking place in the 1900s—ones that are actually horror and not PNR (I love both, so no hate for either)—I definitely recommend checking this one out.

Some issues I had with the graphic novel, however, was that it jumped around a lot, making it hard to follow. While Felipe Kroll is a great artist, I feel like his style is better for concept art and covers rather than full comics and graphic novels. He has a lot of detail, which again is great for single images, but in a comic where there are several images on a page, it makes the eye and mind confused as there is too much information on the page. With the jump in POV and the very detailed art, it was hard to follow a lot of the story without going back and figuring it out.

*Thank you SHP Comics for supplying me with an ARC through Netgalley*

[The Page Ladies Book Club · Rating 5 out of 5]

🩸🎸What if the Summer of Love turned into the Summer of Vampires?

I recently read Woodstake by Darin S. Cape, a vampire graphic novel set during the 1969 Woodstock festival, and the concept alone immediately caught my attention. Mixing the legendary peace-and-music era with a twist on the Dracula myth is such a fun and unique idea.

What I enjoyed most was the creative premise and the psychedelic ‘60s atmosphere. The story leans into the chaos of the Woodstock era while adding vampire horror, which makes for some darkly funny moments. The artwork by Felipe Kroll also stands out the bold visuals and trippy style really capture the counterculture vibe of the time.

That said, while the idea is fantastic, I found the story a little uneven at times. Some moments felt rushed, and I wished the characters had a bit more depth. Still, the genre mashup of rock history, horror, and satire kept things interesting enough to see where it would go.

Overall, it’s a fun, quirky horror graphic novel with a cool concept, especially if you enjoy vampires, classic rock culture, and experimental storytelling.

✨️Thank you Books Forward PR and Darin S. Cape for sharing Woodstake with me!

[frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to SHP Comics and Net Galley for a copy of this ARC

I did not enjoy this one. The story that could have been fun felt more like a failed adaption of Dracula than a fresh take inspired by it.

The characters didn’t get to shine and it felt pretty distant. Character vanishes after a traumatic event while the group is hunted ? Better skinny dip about it.

Sure.

Felt a bit like a trashy horror flick from the 90’s though not necessarily in a bad way, just is a way with a very specific audience.

The art here that unfortunately has to do a lot of the heavy lifting is honestly a bit bizarre. It felt like stills from a story board for a video game in 2015. Like there are character models and parts of them are rendered in beautiful detail and them the hands are low poly lego claws.

I think again there are people who would like it, just not me.

Not the worst thing I’ve read by any stretch but i’d struggle to think of who I could recommend this to.

[Theediscerning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very standard vampire story that picks up when it gets to the 1960s and takes place over the Woodstock weekend. The artwork is a bit awkward – not in actual photorealism, and not really in the uncanny valley of photorealism-adjacent, where you might have once found Dave McKean, but in the next dip over. But the characters are still too close to each other in looks to tell apart, and someone is pictured running and yelling "Help!" with all the dynamism of a bloke bootlegging the Grateful Dead.

Added to that, the text really isn't that great – the last page has to be the limpest thing going, and before then we get a very repetitive character and not nearly enough to fully satisfy. It could have had great fun with the allure of the vampire being equated to the sex 'n' drugs, but doesn't really have anyone worth gunning for. Showing all the tropes of the time in rather stereotypical fashion, it's a flat three from me.

[Adri Holt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dracula has made his way to America. The Van Helsing family have tried to keep the bloodsucker in their sights so they can stop him once and for all, but he disappears somewhere in what would be New York. They bide their time and Dracula finally arises in the early 1900s, looking for blood, a bride, and perhaps more? Rest consumes him again until he appears in the decade of love and peace, the 1960s. Woodstock is expected to be one of the most populated events of the century, a perfect feeding ground. DRACULA ON DRUGS.

These are my own opinions of this graphic novel. I think I had higher expectations for the insanity that would ensue with Dracula being at Woodstock and was sorely disappointed. There didn’t seem to be much of a storyline, the dialogue was poor, and the art seemed like it was AI generated. It might be for you, but it was not for me.

#ThxNetGalley #DarinSCape #Woodstake

[Darrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dracula visits Woodstock. Many characters have names similar to the characters in Bram Stoker's classic and the body count is high. I felt like they could have done more with the acid trip sequence. There seemed to be a few disconnects between the artwork and the text. The police truck looked modern rather than a 1969 model. A car described as red didn't actually look red. A ham sandwich seemed to turn into a hamburger as they're eating it. At one point, the characters are looking for a lost friend in the crowd but don't know how to find him. They hear an announcement asking someone to come to the stage, but instead of having an announcement made to find their missing friend, it gives them an idea to do something else instead! There's a lot of vampire fun in this one, but it didn't entirely work for me.

[Misse Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nice concept...very poor execution.

I was gifted a copy of Woodstake from NetGalley. I'm all for graphic novels, comics, manga...and especially one about vampires coupled with 60s nostalgia surrounding Woodstock. It was supposed to be a few days of love, peace, and power, but instead it was plagued by vampires and a sheriff who was being mind-controlled. The first half of the book was all over the place and I think the author could have done a better job of building up the backstory. It wasn't very focused at all. It smoothed out a bit mid way through but my biggest displeasure was with the graphics. It went from grayscale like images to some color to what appeared to be Ai. And as quickly as I began to start to understand the true plot better it was over..."the end". It had potential but it fell horribly short.

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was hooked in by the premise and the cover art but it ended up being a lot less than I was hoping for. Vampires at Woodstock sounds insanely cool. But the story was so fast paced and disjointed that I thought there were entire chunks missing. The characters fell pretty flat and it wasn't very interesting.

The art was distracting and odd. Within one page the styles would be so inconsistent that I spent more time questioning if AI was being used than actually reading the dialogue. I want to give the benefit of the doubt and hope that's not what was going on but when the art jumps from flat to 3D and what looks like straight up video game screenshots it's hard not to consider the presence of AI art. ASSUMING there was no AI used I'm really disappointed the artist didn't consistently use the style of the cover.

This ARC was received through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

[Pariseia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Impressive! I haven't read a graphic novel in a long time and forgot how much I enjoyed them. Maybe, I'm just partial to a good vampire story.
It was the title, more than the subject matter, that got me to read this one. "Woodstake" by Darin S. Cape would no doubt be relevant to the music festival that happened in Woodstock, New York but I didn't know where the vampires came in. Main characters dodge a lot of surprises during their time at the days long concert . The illustrations get you in the right mood to feel all kinds of feels, throughout.
If you are looking for a book that will entertain you in one sitting, look no further. It's fun, creepy and funny. Give it a shot, no pun intended.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Woodstake” has a lot of potential but doesn’t always fulfill it. The realistic computerized artwork is good in some parts, depending on your views on the style. A grittier style may have fit better.

The story was where I was lost. Not that it was hard to follow. It was just there. Never crossed the line to being really good or great. Instead, it was just…meh.

The ending implies this may not be the end of the story. So I will probably check it out if a continuation does take place, but honestly, if it doesn’t continue, I won’t be upset.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for providing an ARC for an unbiased review.

[Brian Price · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and SHP Comics for the opportunity to read this preview in exchange for an honest review.

Woodstake is a mashup of vampire lore, 1960s hippie/anti-war sentiment, and classic rock. This sounds like it would be a fun combination. Unfortunately, the storytelling felt very disjointed, so much so that I thought I was missing pages from the ARC at times. The art from Felipe Kroll was beautiful a good portion of the time, but it felt a bit overworked for my taste. Also, maybe David Harbour should get some kind of likeness royalties, as the sheriff must have been modeled after him. Overall, I applaud the concept, but I was disappointed in the execution.

[Tegan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this right up til the end. The art is flipping GORGEOUS! If you told me each panel was a painting, I'd believe you. I loved all the attention to detail including the song and artist titles. It's a little rehash of the Dracula book but with a very different ending for some characters. The setting and vampire genre worked well together for a one-off, insular story. The ending was quite abrupt and I wish we had more closure, even if it was just the fallout from the event.

Thank you to Darin S. Cape and Felipe Kroll, SHP Comics, and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own and are left voluntarily.

[Holly Woosey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

1.5 stars if I'm honest. The premise sounded so cool and the cover art had me hooked but the actual execution was not it.

The story was so disjointed in a few spots I thought I had missed a couple of pages, and it was too fast paced in the places you need it to simmer a bit and way too long in the places it needed to be fast and choppy. The decisions that were made felt very out of character for characters that you never really get to know.

The art, while in some places (mainly the title pages) was really cool, the actual cells of the comic were too busy, too dark and not very well done, it made it really difficult to follow along.

unfortunately this was a flop for me and I don't think I would read anymore

[Emily Malek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I was given an ARC of this book from BooksForward and SHP Comics in exchange for an honest review.

There are some books whose concepts sound so good that they need to be explored. For example, have you ever read a story that involves Dracula at Woodstock? Well, now there is the graphic novel "Woodstake" by Darin S. Cape and Felipe Kroll. Despite the great concept and funny bits, the story and illustrations were a letdown.

To read more of this review, click on https://chick-who-reads-everything.co...

[Nikole (literarily_occupied) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am kind of conflicted over this one. On one hand I like the artwork and gritty feel of the earlier pages, but it seemed to get a little more computer generated/animation type vibe at about page 150. The storyline was okay, nothing overly fresh or new, but there is indication of a continuation and I would be up for reading it to see where the characters end up. It's a really cool concept, just not executed to its potential.

Thank you to Edelweiss and the author for this Advance Digital Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

With thanks to the author, publishers SHP Comics, and NetGalley for providing me with a DRC of this comic in exchange for my honest review.

I quite enjoyed reading this comic. The artwork was really impressive for the most part, although the quality did seem to fluctuate a little between pages. That being said I think the storyline and the characters portrayed could have done with a little more development, the plot seemed to jump around quite a bit between pages and the ending itself was a little abrupt.

Overall a fun read though, and enough to keep me interested in reading more from this author and illustrator.

[Charlie Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woodstake was a good read. I really enjoyed the art style and overall aesthetic and i particularly loved the look of the vampires in this story. The backstory of Jack was my favourite part. It was engaging and emotional. I liked the shift into the 60s and the Woodstock setting which gave the book a unique atmosphere. The pacing felt a little rushed in places and there were moments I would have liked to spend more time but overall it was a fun story with an unexpected ending.

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was immediately drawn to this cover and the idea of Woodstock, vampires and horror! Unfortunately, I found this comic hard to follow – there was no real flow to get into too. I felt the characters were flat, and not very developed. I received an ARC through Netgalley and am leaving my review voluntarily.
I do not have much experience with comics so maybe this just wasn’t for me but it could be for you!

[Clarke · Rating 2 out of 5]

A great concept but poor execution. The music festival was under utilised as this could've theoretically been set anywhere. The characters were one dimensional (yet drawn like weird 3D video game characters), I didn't care about anyone and at times found it hard to tell them apart. I also had to switch to reading on my iPad as I found the font quite difficult to read. It's a quick and easy read but nothing much to it. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a review copy.

I wanted to love this book, but ultimately, I just liked it. The premise is so promising, and it just didn't quite deliver. The story moves almost a bit too quickly, with the reader just having to accept some things at face value. The art was kind of cool, but also kind of uncanny valley. I'm not sure if I enjoyed it enough to pick up a second volume. 3 stars

[Haruka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad read. The story was a bit confusing and slow at first. Took me a while before the plot become interesting. The art is pretty and nice. It a great book to read as there are parts of the story that funny.
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Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for giving me a chance to read this book in advanced~

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay - so the thought of Dracula set during Woodstock definitely delivered. I think that this reimagining worked so well. Dracula drinking the blood of hippies and getting a little high on psychedelics - hilarious! The artwork was great - I'm a sucker for that more realistic painting-like quality to comic panels. I really hope there are plans to continue this story, if it hasn't already.