
Warning for mass grave scenes, likely suicide, and overall “humanity sucks” vibes. After establishing themselves as “the funny League,” Giffen, DeMatteis, and Templeton would spend about six issues going dark, and that run starts right here. But before that…
In
Action Comics #577, 1986, Keith Giffen broke out one of his AP English vocab words and created Caitiff, the first and now-last vampire. The word “caitiff” means “wretched, contemptible person” or occasionally “villain,” and it shares roots with “captive.” But the word wasn’t generally associated with vampires, AFAIK, until the launch of
Vampire: the Masquerade in 1991. It’s possible that
VtM got the idea from this. Dialogue by Robert Loren Fleming.
Right from the start, Caitiff lived down to his etymology.
( He was hiding in the sewers and didn’t even make it look fun the way the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did. )