Vassalord is not, strictly speaking, yaoi, although the two protagonists are locked in an intense, if somewhat bizarre, relationship. (There is some debate on this issue, but as far as volume 1 is concerned, it's not, really, although it gets scorchingly close. I'm actually leaning toward the yaoi camp, myself.) It seems to be written from a very marked gay sensibility, both sexy and erotic (they're not the same), more than a little campy, and certainly over the top, but it's really a science-fiction/dark fantasy/action-adventure thriller.
At any rate, we are faced with one of the oddest couples I've ever seen: Johnny Rayflo is a playboy, phenomenally rich, with his fingers in all sorts of pies, not all of them savory. He is also a 400-something year old vampire. Charles J. Chrishunds is a vampire hunter, a cyborg, and also a vampire himself. They've known each other for quite some time -- in fact, Charley, whom Rayflo calls "Cherry," won't feed from anyone but Rayflo. Charley is a free-lancer -- he calls himself a mercenary -- who works mainly for the Catholic Church hunting out vampires and finishing them off.
The have a couple of adventures, the first involving a vampire princess who seems determined to take Rayflo away from Charley, the second involving a weird offshoot of the Unitarian Universalist Church, a dead ringer for Rayflo who happens to be female, and an old, old vampire.
There is a chapter 3 which is really backstory, about the time that Charley and Rayflo met: a war zone in an unspecified time (although there is a flash of horse-mounted cavalry), Johnny having taken up residence in a ruined church when he is discovered by a starving child whom he names "Chris," and who eventually adopts the name Charles J. Chrishunds. It's good character development for both, and one of those little gems of manga: there is nothing in the rest of the book that quite matches the look of peaceful happiness on Rayflo's face as he cares for his foundling. I love it.
There are times when you find yourself wondering what the hell is going on, but I think the narrative is, on the whole, fairly clear-cut, and this is a case where patience will be rewarded -- if you get lost, you can generally get back on track from context.
The graphics are somewhat dense, and some of the action scenes are pretty much illegible, but on the whole the style is appealing. The characterizations here are the prize, though: Rayflo is broadly drawn, campy, insouciant, sometimes blatant, with a childlike element to his personality that gives some surprising depth, while Charley is reserved and dispassionate, seemingly almost rigid, but we get some hints of the potential for wild abandon, particularly where Johnny is concerned.
It's from Tokyopop, and I can't wait to get my hands on volume 2.
Here's a bit of the interior graphics, which will also give you an idea of just what kind of hunks we're dealing with here:
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