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 also concluded as 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment