Well, this is my smallest pull list in a while. I only picked up 4 comics today so instead of bothering with a first impression’s post, I’ll just write a review for all 4. For someone who is writing a novel series about vampires and werewolves, it’s weird that I don’t read that many horror comics. So when they announced that Vampirella was getting a reboot next year, I had to check it out. Writer Nancy A. Collins is better known as a novelist herself, with a vampire series about Sonja Blue. Although she’d also written comics in the past, making her a good choice to take on Dynamites resident vampire heroine.
Vampirella 13 concludes Collins’s run and ties up a number of loose ends. Throughout the series, Vampirella took on a shadow entity, met a monster hunting organization called the Cabal and inherited the throne of the Nosferatu. In doing so, she made enemies not only within the Nosferatu, but in the monster hunting world and an evil sister she didn’t previously know about. This issue concludes pretty much everything that’s happened since the run began, with a treasonous plot to overthrow Vampirella’s position on the throne. It’s a 38 page story that involves several great plot twists, a lot of bloody action and some good drama. This issue has a little bit of everything you could look for in a vampire comic series and it all works very well.
The art by Patrick Berkenkotter is also great. There’s a good amount of detail in the environments, whether it’s the Nosferatu castle with the large courtroom and the fancy bedrooms, or a warehouse with the climactic battle. There are several scenes with a wide variety of ugly, bald nosferatu on the same panel, yet they all have slightly different appearances to help tell them apart. Although Vampirella’s outfit is incredibly revealing, she’s never drawn sexually and more often than not, she’s more imposing than anything else. That said, her outfit seems to spontaneously change in the middle of the court sessions. The colouring by Dinei Ribeiro is also good. The comic has an overall dark look, yet it’s never difficult to figure out what’s going on.
Collins’s Vampirella run has been great. While I found the first arc’s conclusion to be a bit anti-climactic, it was still a great read with some great mythology. The second story involving a plague and villains cursed with immortality was fantastic. Feary Tales is just fun, with a variety of fairy tales with horror twists and over the top rhyming narration. I would definitely recommend this Vampirella run to horror comic fans. Also, 13 is the perfect number to end a horror series on.
8.5/10
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