Vampires get no trust.
Creative Staff:
Story: Corinna Bechko
Art: Javier Garcia-Miranda
What They Say:
With the Xenomorphs awakened, the Martian base is in mortal danger. But can Vampirella win the trust of her human companions in time to launch a counter attack?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While I was certainly wary going into the first installment of this six issue series for obvious reasons, Bechko and Garcia-Miranda won me over quickly with the work. Placing in its own element, keeping the science fiction side of it and providing their own take on it overall within the Earth system, we got some great tension, some fun alien moments, and a good bit of character building so that we had a sense of who is who. Naturally, the various who’s are going to get offed as time goes on and we saw that quickly in the first issue with three of the team that she went in with ended up dead, leaving just her and Lars since she didn’t exactly die. Having her being able to survive the implantation is something that feels new, though it may have occurred in some other Alien series that I haven’t partaken of over the years. Here, it certainly makes sense.
The fallout from that is what’s really engaging to watch as we get Vampirella and Tucker the remaining souls down below, locked in due to the timer on the door, and needing to keep it shut so that the creatures can’t escape. With the idea that these are the babies of the creatures, well, they don’t want to see the adult version. A decent chunk of the beginning focuses on her stern insistence of his helping her to stay alive and mend and that leads to some really neat moments where his belief on how vampires work mixes with the reality of how she works. What makes things difficult though is that while she can get through to him, when they both finally reach out to the operations center above, well, they just see bodies and they see that Lars is being controlled by Vampirella. Some don’t believe that since it makes zero sense, but the fear of vampires is what drives most of them.
And that naturally means finding a way to make everything more dangerous, which involves getting through the door sooner and ensuring that the real danger in there with the aliens can find their way out. It’s a great bit of visual choreography from Garcia-Miranda as he takes us through the dark areas, shining a good light to make it even creepier, and revealing the adult aliens now ready to feed on a growing stream of food sources. The character side of it is fun as the security forces that arrive end up in a real panic as they’re not going after what they initially thought they were and instead have to contend with being cut down quick. So keeping the focus mostly on Vampirella and Lars works well since their only recourse is to move deeper into the ruins, which in turn has its own discoveries. This is where things feel like it’s really evolving its own overall mythology of the past and origins of the species, which I’m totally fine with since this is its own self-contained story. But there’s so many things in that last panel that begs explanation that the next issue can’t come soon enough.
In Summary:
The aliens side of the story continues to be used carefully as we instead get most of our time with Vampirella and Lars. Which works in the book’s favor as we get to deal with some solid narrative and dialogue direction that adds to the tension more than just random running away or trying to survive. The pair definitely show the power imbalance well between them and seeing Vampirella forcing control is definitely well played, especially since she can see everything else spiraling out of control. Garcia-Miranda definitely has some great layouts here and a strong sense of danger and evil coming from the aliens with the way the shadows work around them while still ensuring that we’re not wallowing in utter and murky darkness. The book is largely following a familiar pattern to be sure when it comes to how these stories work, but it’s also giving us a lot to love with the characters, interactions and the injection of its own vampire mythology. This is definitely a very exciting miniseries that I’m loving.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: October 7th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
