More tales from the other side.
Creative Staff:
Story: Joseph Michael Linsner
Art: Joseph Michael Linsner
What They Say:
Dawn and Vampirella start to understand that all the world is a stage as they tell stories while plotting their escape from the demon Masodik. Dawn tells the tale of a young girl who trades her innocence for a greater understanding of the cosmos, and Vampirella tells the story of a girl from a planet where the rivers run red with blood.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As we move into the third installment of six for the Dawn & Vampirella crossover event, I find my fears becoming more realized about the book. While the series opened with the two of them working together for a spell during it, we’ve gotten something more akin to a story time book. Which I fully admit can be good, but when it involves Vampirella, I’m in an enough is enough kind of phase because we have the Feary Tales series that just ended and the 100th issue extravaganza which was filleod with them. I wanted something more out of this book than hearing the two women tell stories in order to entertain Masodik, even if the stories can be interesting. When you have these two characters, do you really want to spend time reading made up stories about them in other forms?
This installment is essentially more of what we had the last time around, and even covers familiar territory in a more obvious way. We do get some time in seeing how Masodik operates with the first couple of pages in how he plays the whole demon role to the hilt, coming up with ways to create unique sounds of pain to soothe the soul, so to speak, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect. Dawn calls it charming, which comes across as insincere to say the least, and Vampirella just regulates it to awful. Masodik basically makes it clear here that he’s showing off and trying to impress them with how far he goes, but he falls into the category of simply trying too hard. And that doesn’t make for an appealing villain. The few pages we get of him in this issue just reinforces that pretty regularly and you can practically see Vampirella’s eyes rolling every time she’s in panel.
This installment spends most of its time on going back to the post-war world where we saw the focus on Vampirella previously as she took control of the tribe after succeeding in the mission into the city. Because of how that went, Nancy, aka Dawn, decided that she wanted to prove her worthiness since Ann had done so in a big way and that has her going back into the city herself. Her time in Manhattan has her drawn to a demon that’s there named Cernunnos and the two make a deal with each other that basically puts Dawn in the familiar death and rebirth cycle that we’ve seen with her before. There’s several pages of mind numbingly boring material before it goes back to her in her new powerful form, but also in the form of someone looking to bring healing to the world, which is how she complements Ann and her way of dealing with their enemies. It all makes a certain sense, but it comes back to the central point. Who cares?
Thankfully, the other story that gets told here from Vampirella’s point of view is The Girl from Drakulon, which gives us another tale from that world in a pretty nicely done style from Linsner. Sadly, it’s a story that’s far too familiar to a few other stories told recently in other anthology-ish works for the character as we see how Vampirella has been shielded from things over the years and realizes the true nature of her people and the relationship with Earth and its people, which is what has her wanting to change that nature on Earth itself. We get some interesting bits with her mother in how the relationship between them works, and how life will be different for her when she gets to Earth, but not much beyond that. In the end, I feel like the guy in the last panel that’s just crying out in listening to all of this in pain, because it feels so familiar.
In Summary:
At the halfway mark of the series, we get a little bit of a threat right at the end of the book that has Masodik now finding a new avenue through which to torment Vampirella, but it feels like little of note when you get down to it. With two full issues of stories being told with some connective tissue to hold it all together, the Dawn/Vampirella event has further underwhelmed here. And it’s not helped by the lengthy delays between installments since that has it coming up alongside other anthology style works on top of Vampirella’s main series, which has its own exploration of stories. There are decent ideas and material in here, the second story working the best for me, but there doesn’t feel like there’s any true forward momentum going on here.
Grade: C+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: February 18th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
