In January 2010, Newsarama named Albuquerque one of ten creators to watch for the coming year. Albuquerque, with Eduardo Medeiros and Mateus Santolouco, wrote Mondo Urbano, a graphic novel published by Oni Press. That same year Albuquerque began illustrating American Vampire, a horror series published by DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, the first five issues of which consisted of two separate stories, one by Scott Snyder and one by Stephen King, marking King's first original work for comics. Albuquerque illustrated the two stories with different styles, representative of both the personalities of the characters and the eras in which they were set, explaining that he utilized high-contrast blacks and whites for the 1920s story featuring Pearl in order to evoke the films of that era, and a "dirtier, sketchier technique" involving traditional inking, ink wash and pencils for the 1880s story featuring bank robber Skinner, in order to evoke that story's "rough and violent" setting. The first hardcover collection appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list, and the series won IGN's Best of 2010 Award, 2011 Eisner Award and the 2011 Harvey Award, all of them for Best New Series.
