Once upon a time, before the Anita Blake series became cheap porn with surreally well-endowed vampires and werethingies, there was "Guilty Pleasures." And like many a successful fantasy/horror novel before it, Laurell K. Hamilton's breakout horror/fantasy story has been adapted into graphic novel form, with "Guilty Pleasures, Vol. 1" compiling the first six issues of her first novel. The results... are not so good. Slack-paced and self-indulgent, it comes across as a goth teen's daydreams, wrapped in indifferent artwork that doesn't seem quite to match the storyline. Anita Blake is a vampire hunter and an animator, able to raise zombies from the dead. Nickname: the Executioner. She also isn't too fond of vampires or werecreatures, even though St. Louis is swarming with them. So when a vampire acquaintance comes to hire her, she turns him down. But at a bachelorette party, she soon finds herself hip-deep in vampire politics -- and a dangerous enemy who is trying to kill her. Things only get more complicated when she ends up facing the Master of the City, the deceptively childlike Nikolaos, and a dungeon full of wererats. To find who is offing vampires in St. Louis, she'll need to relax her "no vamps" rule -- and join forces with the mysterious, seductive Jean-Claude. But as she investigates further, she finds herself delving into the dark world of vampires, and the "freaks" that worship them.... This graphic novel is pretty faithful to the original novel, sticking closely to Hamilton's storyline -- which admittedly is tough, since the whole mystery is only pursued in random fits and starts. Stacie M. Ritchie and then Jess Ruffner provide some pretty good adaptation of the first-person dialogue ("You don't have to be undead to be evil, but it helps"), which is never easy. But... a big but... A graphic novel is more than its words -- it's art too. Brett Booth has done some decent artwork in the past, but he doesn't seem to have his heart in this one, perhaps because Hamilton oversaw the entire process. Parts of it are decent at the core, but the little details make it silly, including the cartoonish illustrations (Anita's GIANT lips, which make Angelina Jolie's look positively skinny) in a realistically-drawn comic. In fact, these become more prominent as the comic proceeds. Often the action described doesn't match the illustrations (while thinking, "I'm not a coward," Anita huddles down and wrings her hands). And we get other visual quirks, like giant thick thighs -- they pop up on lots of people like Anita and the rat king, but Madge's enormous thunder thighs (each is thicker than her waist) are the funniest thing in the whole book. Anita Blake herself is the most comically drawn -- she's as pale as an albino, has ultra-red lips, and ridiculously curly hair. The hair is the biggest distraction since it's always snaking down over her eyes and occasionally drapes itself six inches in front of her face. And her personality cannot make up for the artwork -- she acts less like a tough, gutsy vampire hunter and more like a sulky Hot Topic teenager. Her "tough" one-liners, which she lobs at all the wrong people, don't hurt this impression. Perhaps as a reflection of Booth's own mood, our doughty, not-too-bright protagonist also always looks bored -- even when pinned to the ground by a vampire, she looks incredibly bored. Worse, her eye-rolling facial contortions make her look even more alien. Nor does it help that Jean-Claude looks exactly like a breastless Anita, right down to the pasty chalk-white skin and artificially flowing black hair. That might be okay, if he had a personality beyond "sexy French dude." The other characters don't fare that well either: Bert looks like a blond Frankenstein's Monster, Philip looks like he's covered with herpes, and the deadly Edward looks like a wide-eyed pervert. And the lethal Nikolaos looks like a Disney heroine, which I don't think was the intention. "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures" takes on a mildly entertaining fantasy book, and transforms it into a thoroughly tepid graphic novel. Interesting for completists, but an exercise in lackluster art for all others.