At this point I think it's safe for me to assume I'm never going to really love this series. It's fine. It moves along at a decent pace, has really solid art and the characters behave as realistically as a bunch of vampires can. The problem is, this series is doing absolutely nothing new. When I hear people talk about it, the thing I hear most is "it makes vampires cool again," taking them back from the Twilights and True Bloods that have made vampires watered-down cartoon monsters. And I guess when you compare American Vampire to those books, it IS darker and more visceral. But it's also VERY BORING. 
 I was really hoping this volume would kick the series into high gear, but it really just kicked it into first after it had been sitting in neutral for 12 issues. Here's the setup: vampires have existed in secret for millennia controlling lots of stuff behind the scenes (part of almost every vampire story for the past 30 years). Now there is a new, more powerful type of vampire (basically the plot of the Underworld films). It can walk in the daytime (Blade). It turns a reluctant woman into a vampire but she falls in love with a human man and has to live with this (True Blood, gross). 
 Then in volume 3, we work World War II into the equation and start bringing the fight to the ancient, hidden vampires. This would be great if the plot made any sense and if the writing didn't create false twists by doubling back on what it had previously set up and/or just throwing in a character out of nowhere to get everyone out of trouble. 
 This series severely misuses its most unique feature: an old west cowboy vampire who is a vicious criminal mastermind who could be doing WAY MORE with his power. Skinner Sweet seems like a complete idiot. Everyone is always talking about how devious he is and how he "must be playing an angle," but inevitably NOTHING COMES OF IT. He just hangs around and fails at everything he tries to do. Scary. Hiding a character's motivations as a form of mystery is fine, but you have to give us something, Snyder. So far we have absolutely no idea what Sweet is "up to," and at this point it's just starting to feel like he isn't "up to" anything. 
 I know Snyder is better than this. His work on Batman and Swamp Thing right now is stellar, breathing new life into old characters. I just wish he'd apply that same ingenuity and bold decision-making to this series, cause it doesn't get any older than vampires.