By Matthew Stephen Sunrich
By
the time I started collecting comics,
Vampirella had been absent from
the racks for about six years.
The
original series ended with issue #112 in 1983; its companion magazines Creepy
and Eerie held on for another couple years or so before James
Warren, owing to health problems and other concerns, decided to close up shop.
The property was subsequently acquired by Harris, which handled a variety of
periodicals such as Guitar World, when it was auctioned off, but the
company didn't begin publishing new Vampirella material until 1991.
Fan
reaction to the stories, which were published in color comics rather than
black-and-white magazines, was mixed, but the books sold fairly well. Drakulon's
favorite daughter reached the peak of her popularity in the late 1990s when "bad
girl" comics, oddly, became a thing, and many prominent writers, including
Alan Moore and Kurt Busiek, contributed to her adventures. Harris held onto her
until 2010, when it surrendered the lovely vampiress to Dynamite.
Admittedly,
I had never found the character particularly worth looking into. For one thing,
unlike the throngs of quasi-pretentious geeks/community-theater actors who
played White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade roleplaying game around that
time, I had never thought much of undead blood-suckers. In Bernie Wrightson:
A Look Back, I found that the famed horror artist's opinion mirrored my
own. "They tend to be snotty," he remarked, "and like being
vampires." Other than Marvel's Morbius (who became a vampire as a result
of a failed experiment), it didn't seem that vampires were ever looking for a
cure. As Wrightson expressed, they didn't appear to have a problem with their
condition, and they even possessed a certain "coolness" factor that
reminded me of the popular crowd in high school. Remember that Ray-Ban
commercial where the vampires are immune to sunlight because they're wearing
designer shades? Ugh. (Trivia: The concept of vampires' being killed by the sun
originated in F. R. Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu, not in Dracula,
the novel of which it was an unauthorized adaptation. While Dracula was
weakened by daylight, it was not fatal to him.)
I
knew virtually nothing about Vampirella; my opinion was based on the images I
had seen in various magazines such as Wizard and Previews, which,
like a lot of the art in 1990s horror comics, tended to be kind of gross (one
cover has her lasciviously bathing in a fountain of blood) and over the top. I
assumed she was a "standard" vampire, who just happened to be
scantily clad and sexy, rather than an altruistic, non-undead superhero devoted
to ridding Earth of evil monsters, who came from a planet where blood was akin
to water (this version of her origin was later retconned, but the principle's
the same). Interestingly enough, Trina Robbins, who designed Vampirella's
costume, told Comic Book Artist in 1999 that a teacher with whom she
once coffee had grown up enjoying the original magazine but had been "horrified
and repulsed" by what she had seen in recent publications.
What
I perceived as Harris' mishandling of the character kept me away for a long
time, but I became curious when Dynamite released a paperback compilation of
her original stories in 2013 (over 500 pages, culled from the first 37 issues,
for a very-reasonable $25). Being a fan of Bronze-Age horror magazines, I felt
that I needed to at least give the gal a chance. And, man, am I glad I did! I
discovered a treasure-trove of fantastic material and became a fan immediately.
I picked up the new series by Nancy Collins and Patrick Berkenkotter that
started a few months later and found it to be likewise excellent, though in
entirely different ways.
Since
then, Vampirella has become one of my favorite characters, and I have collected
most of the magazines (either in their original form or in reprint compilations
such as the excellent Vampirella Archives) and all of the comics
Dynamite has released.
For
those of you who don't know, Vampirella was originally conceived as nothing
more than a horror hostess. During the early 1950s, EC Comics found success
with Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt
of Fear, hosted, respectively, by the Crypt-Keeper, the Vault-Keeper, and
the Old Witch. When Warren started its line of horror magazines, it borrowed
this idea, giving readers Uncle Creepy, Cousin Eerie, and Vampirella (if you
find it unfair that the women are outnumbered, you might want to check out DC's
oft-overlooked Bronze-Age gem The Witching Hour, in which all of the
stories are hosted by females). After a handful of issues, the editor decided
that Vampirella was falling short of her potential by merely bookending stories
and deserved a feature of her own.
Warren's
magazines were anthologies, featuring several stories by several creative teams
per issue. By the time Vampirella established itself, every issue
included a tale starring the vampiress along with several others, some of which
were parts of series but most of which were standalone stories. The themes in
Vampirella's stories varied. Sometimes she'd fight monsters. Other times she'd
face evil wizards or alien invaders. Her adventures were an interesting mixture
of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, which reflected the genres that Warren's
magazines made extensive use of (while it's usually associated with horror,
many stories were sword & sorcery, science fiction, or weird western). The
artwork was consistently spectacular, executed by such greats as Jose "Pepe"
Gonzalez, Gonzalo Mayo, Esteban Maroto, Jose Ortiz, Alfredo Alcala, Luis
Bermejo, and Rafael Aura Leon (Auraleon).
I
selected #38 (November 1974) to discuss both because it's the earliest full
issue in my collection and because it contains a mummy story, which is of
particular interest to me. The issue comprises six tales, and, like most of
Warren's magazines of the period, it's a great-looking package. The cover, by
Manuel Sanjulian, is a real beaut; it possesses many of the attributes that
made classic horror so compelling, juxtaposed with Vampi's stunning figure. (I
was born too late to enjoy Warren's mags during their original run, and I envy
readers who were able to get this much awesomeness for a mere dollar at the
local newsstand month after month. Granted, a dollar was a lot more money back
then, but comics are four bucks these days, and they arguably aren't as good.)
There was a major Universal Monsters revival going on at the time, coupled with
the fact that the Comics Code Authority had finally relaxed its standards,
leading to a resurgence in monster comics (it should be noted that magazines
were not forced to adhere to the Code, which is how Warren and its ilk were
able to flourish). It's hard to deny that, for a horror magazine, Vampirella had a touch of class.
Vampirella
starts things off with "The Mummy's Revenge," by Flaxman Loew and
Gonzalez. Vampirella's most prolific illustrator, Gonzalez uses many different
techniques in his storytelling. Here, he juxtaposes light and dark (not unlike
the Renaissance artist Caravaggio) to create a feeling of endless dread within
eerie catacombs. You can almost smell the dust and decay as the undead emerge
from their niches. (Am I the only one who likes the smell of old comics?)
Touring
Italy's Museum of Antiquities, Vampirella encounters a young antiquarian named
Bruno Verdi. She accepts his invitation to dinner, and after the meal he takes
her on a tour of the catacombs beneath the city, where untold thousands of
souls were lain to rest. The vampiress soon realizes, however, that Verdi has
left her to be torn apart by the undead, including the mummy of Ptolemy, who,
strangely enough, is a vampire. With the help of Amun-Ra, Vampirella escapes
and heads to Verdi's apartment, where she gets her revenge by feeding on his
blood. He and the mummy, which is still back in the tomb, simultaneously
crumble to dust, and Vampirella, when questioned about her evening, humorously
remarks that her date "went all to pieces." (This may seem corny, but
horror and humor have gone hand in hand for decades. The EC stories almost
always ended with the host's dropping a pun or two, a tradition which has been
picked up by the new quarterly Warren pastiche The Creeps, which I will no doubt write about eventually.)
Mummies
have been popular fixtures in horror fiction since the 1800s. The discovery of
the strangely intact tomb of Tutankhamen by Howard Carter in 1922 brought
immense public attention to the discipline of Egyptology, and the mystique of
perfectly-preserved corpses from millennia ago compelled even more writers to
pen horrific tales of the risen dead. (H. P. Lovecraft even ghost-wrote a story
for Harry Houdini called "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs," which is
definitely worth checking out.) The new medium of film made the prospect of
such tales even more promising. Universal and Hammer each produced their own
versions of the mummy story, and there have been numerous others since then.
Marvel published The Living Mummy in the pages of Supernatural Thrillers in the early 1970s, and all of the horror
magazines featured bandaged abominations at one time or another. For
Vampirella, mummies are just another kind of monster, nothing to write home
about, although the revelation that she was, in fact, Cleopatra in a previous
life adds more weight to the story. Exactly how she was supposed to have been
born on alien planet and also undergone reincarnations on Earth is a question
better left unasked.
Five
more excellent tales follow.
Gerry
Boudreau, Carl Wessler, and Maroto give us "Gypsy Curse," in which a
rich count marries a gypsy maiden but succumbs to a terrible curse when he
chooses to mistreat her. Maroto is another of Warren's most skilled artists.
His airy ink work, combined with his phantasmagoric layouts, imbues his stories
with an almost dreamlike aspect. It is interesting that the "gypsy"
is a stock character in fiction (as a fortune teller and/or dabbler in magic of
questionable ethics), but to the Romani, to whom the term refers, it is often
considered a slur. Because of this, it is used far less frequently these days,
but it's hard to deny the appeal of the image of an old, cloaked woman residing
in a tenebrous wagon parked in the forest, ominously prognosticating with her
tarot deck.
"Lucky
Stiff," by Boudreau, Wessler, and Ramon Torrents, is the curious story of
a mild-mannered office worker who becomes bewitched by the gorgeous new file
clerk. Readers are given a glimpse into the possible, horrific outcome of their
rendezvous, but he never reaches her house because fate has other plans. The
archetype of the "crazy cat lady," which has become so popular these
days, is flipped on its head in this yarn, and we are given just a hint of the
twisted world of the girl in the office who seizes the attention of every man
who crosses her path. Not unlike the hapless sailors enchanted by the sirens'
song, they are bound to be undone by their own appetites.
Next,
John Jacobson and Felix Mas offer up "Out of the Nameless City." Fans
of H. P. Lovecraft will immediately recognize his fingerprints in this tale,
and there are several things taken directly from his work. Set in 1926, the
year Lovecraft's groundbreaking "The Call of Cthulhu" was written,
this story concerns an actor believed to be the key to the resurrection of
ancient gods and the man who tries to stop it from happening. This story's
execution, viewed both as a pastiche and a story unto itself, is practically
flawless.
"On
Little Cat Feet," by Jacobson and Auraleon, is a tale of bizarre
witchcraft. When an elderly landlady kicks a witch out of her boarding house,
the sorceress, having transformed herself into a cat, returns to seek revenge.
But she finds that her former roommate, a sculptor, has a bizarre way of
creating her statues. There is quite a bit of humor in this story, but there
are also moments that are bound to make readers chuckle in "self-defense"
because it's hard to know what to make of them. Warren's magazines often
feature particularly weird stories, and this is definitely one. It makes you
wonder how on earth the writer came up with it.
The issue concludes with "Trick of the Tide," Jack Butterworth
and Isidro Mones' short-but-sweet yarn of a treacherous man named Gabriel
Greaves who earns money fishing corpses out of the Thames and the waterlogged
corpse of a woman he murders for her husband's money. Not surprisingly, things
do not turn out terribly well for him. Let's just say that he learns the hard
way that being an opportunist can have dire consequences.
Matt Sunrich, a great fan of the Bronze Age of comic books, maintains two blogs: The Other Other Castle, about Bronze-Age sword and sorcery, and Forging the Dark Knight, concerning Bronze-Age Batman.Labels: comics, Matt Sunrich, Vampirella
