Savage Tales: Vampirella #1 - Dynamite Entertainment

SAVAGE TALES: VAMPIRELLA No. 1, May 2018

Just what “Dynamite Entertainment” was trying to achieve when it decided to print this $4.99 “one-shot” is arguably a little confusing. On the one hand the title’s Robert Hack drawn cover is clearly a deliberate homage to John Buscema’s grisly painting for the old “Marvel Comics” Conan book from the Seventies, and resultantly conjures up images of “violent barbarians”, blood-drenched beheadings and an entertaining mix of sword and sorcery. Whilst on the other, the periodical’s contents disappointingly appears far more akin to something found within the comic book publishing imprint’s back-catalogued series “Savage Tales”; a bi-monthly which featured both “the most savage stories that comic creators have ever told”, as well as “a rotating cast of characters and creators”, and was rather unceremoniously cancelled after just ten issues.

Indeed, one of the most frustrating elements to this book is that it is shamelessly (and as far as the magazine’s front page is concerned anonymously) padded out with a ten-year-old reprint of Doug Murray’s two-part tale “Valaka” from the aforementioned abandoned title’s run. Admittedly, this back-up feature is disconcertingly the highlight of “Savage Tales: Vampirella” with its terrific tale of revenge, treachery, swordplay, manacled damsels and demonic rituals. But considering that this particular publication supposedly spotlights Forrest J. Ackerman’s co-creation, the 'paying public' must surely have rightfully expected its entire contents to focus upon their vampiric super-heroine, rather than see her replaced by some dubiously duplicitous two-faced villain from yesteryear? 

Sadly, Erik Burnham’s lead narrative involving the one-time “horror-story hostess” isn’t even all that original either, with the lead character yet again finding herself in a strange land with no memory as to how she got there, why she was immediately attacked by a quartet of unruly-looking well-armed ruffians, or how to fully utilise her array of formidable powers. Such disorientation genuinely smacks of Paul Cornell’s incarnation of Vampirella from 2017 and unsurprisingly requires “the daughter of Lilith” to once more stealthily enter a foreign city in disguise, simply in order to ascertain what untoward magical machinations are taking place to its mind-controlled inhabitants.

Inconsistent, yet predominantly pleasing to the eye, this comic’s artwork by the combined creative team of Anthony Marques, J. Bone, Fernando Ruiz and Daniel HDR at least provides some modicum of entertainment. Packed full of gore and internal organs at first, as the scantily clad protagonist rips asunder a party of ill-meaning ruffians, the quality of the illustrations decidedly deteriorates the closer the action gets to the conurbation’s snake-like ruler, and only seems to ‘pick back up’ in time for the female vampire to settle herself upon her dead opponent’s throne, having torn his astonished head off…

Writer: Erik Burnham, and Artists: Anthony Marques, J. Bone, Fernando Ruiz and Daniel HDR