The deadly action picks up.
Creative Staff:
Story: Nancy A. Collins
Art: Dave Acosta
What They Say:
Jennifer Blood is determined to avenge herself on the woman she believes is trying to frame her for murder – Vampirella! But the sudden arrival of Los Muertos leader Calavera and his heavily armed narcos force the vigilante and the vampire to team-up in a deadly “Cemetery Dance”. An official tie-in to the epic Swords of Sorrow crossover event, written by renowned author Nancy A. Collins (Swamp Thing, Vampirella).
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the third of four installments, the Jennifer Blood & Vampirella pairing miniseries enters a phase where it feels like it should have been three issues. It’s not that it’s a bad series, but it’s feeling too decompressed at this point and is losing some of its energy along the way. With the two leads having had some extensive background time before, more for Jennifer Blood than Vampirella, there hasn’t been a whole lot of meaty material to latch onto here for the storyline. Especially when we get to the final page and you wish you had more than just one more installment for it to be meaningful and run with it, as it could have kicked off this installment with it.
The premise of the book at this point is that we still have Jennifer thinking that Vampirella is knocking off people and painting her name on the walls in order to pin the murders on her. That has her doing double duty of tracking her down and dealing with some of the thugs that have been causing her problems as of late. While she’s doing this, Vampirella is continuing to deal with problems of her own, namely her hunger. While she’s been having a bit of a meal in this world, the lack of her usual stores is making it difficult as it’s not quite quenched. And she’s also wary in general, not just because of Blood but because there’s a belief that her sister may be behind this. Considering the Fairy Tail series and the way she was bopped through so many worlds, it’s not an unreasonable suspicion to have.
So when the two do come together, there’s naturally tension between our leads. It doesn’t lead to an all out fight between them that takes up the issue, but there’s plenty of accusations and plenty of Jennifer simply saying she can’t believe that Vampirella doesn’t know her considering her reputation. What helps is that the thugs end up starting to play a role in all of this as they look to take the pair out, but the women bond together after realizing they both got swords from the same man, the Courier, and that has them realizing that they should probably align for the short term at least. It’s a decent enough small action sequence that deals with the thugs leader and puts the rest in the smart position of hightailing it out of there. but it also finally brings them into contact with the forces from the Other Side with Chastity showing up, making it clear she’s been causing all the trouble. If only she had shown up earlier and had been more overtly involved.
In Summary:
The penultimate issue of this particular spinoff supporting series is one that does have some fun moments as our two leads continue to circle each other and deal with the threat that each represents. There’s some fun dialogue that they have together, though the narration along the way gets a little heavy, particularly from Jennifer, which slowed up the book a bit. The action is what keeps things moving as it’s welcome to see some resolution to the thug storyline that cropped up, which didn’t engage all that much, and I liked some of the nods that came in as the two leads began to work with each other and a momentary bit of trust was put into place because of those actions. I’m more looking forward to the finale simply because we get Chastity involved and that ups the game overall, which should have happened sooner.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: June 10th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
