The new Queen of the Nosferatu is introduced to the larger world.
Creative Staff:
Story: Nancy A. Collins
Art: Patrick Berkenkotter / Dennis Crisostomo
What They Say:
Vampirella assumes the role and obilgations of Lord Drago, joining The Kabal, a clandestine organization of supernatural creatures. When a strange, rabies-like plague spreads through the slums of Sao Paolo like wildfire, infecting victims with homicidal fury, the Kabal calls upon Vampirella to capture the disease’s murderous creator — one of The Accursed, a human condemned to eternal life for his sins: the fabled Dr. Faustus.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Vampirella in this new run has had a slow build to be sure with the first five issues putting Vampirella in the position she was in on being on the outs with the vatican and then teaming up, grudgingly, with the nosferatu to deal with the curse that was placed on her. That lead us to a bit of a journey in understanding a variety of other vampiric creatures over the millennia and it was intriguing in itself, but it required a proper payoff to go through essentially standalone stories. That happened in the previous issue as she ended up killing Drago and taking on the role of Queen of the Nosferatu, a moment that now gives her some real direction, a different kind of power to wield and a much, much larger world to deal with.
This book starts us down that path and we get to distinct stories that come together, one with a bit more exposition than the other. The narrative structure works well as we get out focus in Sao Paulo at first, meeting a woman who is being given a flu shot in order to make sure she doesn’t get sick and can keep working in order to climb out of the economic class she’s in within this very busy and populated city. Unfortunately for her, she’s being treated by the legendary (and believed to be a myth) Dr. Faustus who is turning people into murderers with the injection he’s giving them. We see several instances of this in terms of the attacks themselves as the person exhibits a few symptoms before basically going homicidal and infecting others. It turns into quite the mess and what we see of it across the book here is the start of a real terror situation, though the media is manipulated into downplaying it.
On the other side of the world, we get to spend time with Vampirella as she tries to understand more of her position as the Queen here, seeing what Drago has left and coping with the kinds of quirks of it all. This is where the book really grabs me as, with the arrival of an all black letter, Vampirella is introduced to the Kabal organization. A secretive group that was formed around five hundred years ago in order to try and convince people that these creatures of the night are truly myths. Doing so would allow the various races to survive into the age of science and find ways to feed while also keeping control over those that may stray and cause problems. A secretive group like this that brings together vampires, witches, werewolves and more is intriguing, especially since they, like the Vatican, have reason to keep the powerful demons at bay since they would lose out in the end as well. It’s a weird situation for Vampirella to grasp, but we get a lot of exposition here to flesh it out and I definitely enjoyed that we did get it. It also ties us into what Faustus is doing and the reality of his past, which adds a great layer to what’s to come.
In Summary:
This issue is a pretty good jumping on point, which Dynamite points out on the absolutely gorgeous cover we get here from Mike Mayhew. After all that has come before, Vampirella steps into a larger world, one that has a lot of background material to catch up on but which helps to really cement the organization and what it’s doing. Combining that with an outbreak caused by Faustus keeps it moving well amid all the dialogue and exposition. I generally like what Patrick Berkenkotter does with the series and we get a lot of really good panels and designs here, but this issue just feels darker and murkier than it should be in the color realm this time around, especially for the digital side, as it just blends together and overpowers too much in a lot of places. I wasn’t sure what to expect with Vampirella in general, having only touched on the character a few times over the years, but this team is putting together a strong book that took some time to build and the payoff is starting to show with even better stories and direction.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: December 3rd, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
