Vampirella #0 - Dynamite Entertainment

VAMPIRELLA No. 0, February 2017

Sold as a twenty-five cent “introductory priced issue” by “Dynamite Entertainment” in February 2017, this seventeen-page periodical must surely have demoralised all but the most ardent of “Vampirella” devotees with its utterly bizarre sci-fi script set “over a thousand years” since Forrest J Ackerman’s co-creation was supposedly last seen “defending the world from threats both mystic and evil.” In fact, as a result of the narrative’s futuristic setting and inclusion of laser weapons, it’s hard not to contradict Paul Cornell’s pre-publication belief that this comic isn’t apparently yet another of the publisher’s reboots…

Perhaps top of this comic’s list of disappointments is the Chippenham-born novelist’s conviction that a story featuring “the daughter of Lilith” facing a dystopian world “unlike anything she might expect – or want to defend” would be of much interest to the gothic anti-heroine’s fan-base. True, just such a tale is clearly the “beginning [of] a new and very different direction” for the one-time inhabitant of the planet Drakulon, and a modicum of interest can at least be gleaned from the adventurers’ brief exploration of the vampire’s creepy catacombs and cob-webbed crypt.

But, alongside its disconcerting space-age setting and disagreeable premise that humans now contain “a new sort of blood”, this entire book genuinely feels more akin to the series’ previously printed “Altered States” one-shot, rather than anything nourishingly new. Indeed, it is surely not the greatest of signs for the quality of a book’s writing when the magazine’s most exciting feature is arguably an announcement for a “deal with Lionsgate to bring [the neo-noir action thriller film character] John Wick to comics” rather than the magazine's actual content? 

Just as displeasing as the “Doctor Who” author’s rather lack-lustre and arguably pedantically-paced plot, are Jimmy Broxton’s somewhat scratchy-looking breakdowns. A frequent collaborator of Cornell, the “UK based graphic artist” undoubtedly stems from a similar vein to Vampirella’s original “black-and-white magazine” illustrators with a technique truly reminiscent of Jim Holdaway’s “Modesty Blaise”. However, when applied to such subject matters as advanced clothing, not dissimilar to that found throughout Judge Dredd’s post-apocalyptic Mega-City One, and coloured using a garishly pink palette, the penciller’s “classy, European style” appears far more akin to that found within the panels of an amateur fanzine as opposed to something promoted by “a [genuine] force in the American comic book industry.”

The variant cover art of "VAMPIRELLA" No. 0 by J. Scott Campbell