Back to the beginning.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jordie Bellaire
Art: Drew Moss
Colors: Rebecca Nalty
Letterer: Becca Carey
What They Say:
The first ONGOING series, co-starring The Daughter Of Drakulon and The She-Devil With A Sword! From Eisner winner JORDIE BELLAIRE (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Redlands) and DREW MOSS (Star Wars) comes a saga spanning space and time, filled with horror, adventure, mystery, and murder!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a number of Vampirella and Red Sonja projects underway, including one where they’re paired up with the women of Archie Comics, Dynamite has opted for one more and an ongoing series at that. This new work brings together the two characters under Jordie Bellaire’s guidance and he sets things up well in taking us back to 1969 but with modern approaches. Drew Moss is an excellent choice for an artist for this project as he captures the period well, the Soviet aspects just right from an entertainment perspective, and gives Vampirella exactly the right look to fit in at the time while still adhering to some of the usual costuming aspects that define her.
With it a year since Vampirella has come to Earth, she’s gotten used to varied traditions and understandings so that she can fit in. While spending most of her time in Brooklyn, she’s not expanding her reach as a story of death and supposed murder in Russia has drawn here there. Taking on the role of a journalist for it, she intends to find out what happened as there are some basic things that it could be. But she likes to explore all the possibilities and find out the truth, especially since one of the calls is that a Yeti roams the mountain and did the killings. That it seems to be tied to the Soviet space program is an interesting wrinkle that may mean more as it goes on, it does provide her easy access with getting there and asking questions, making her way into areas and getting info to take her further.
That it takes her to near the mountain is no surprise, though that happens quicker than I expected, and I love that it spends time with a former scientist that now spends his time drinking and ashamed of how things played out. It’s engaging to watch Ella in this way as she’s friendly without actually being affectionate, drawing people out to talk and getting more and more to do so. Of course, talking goes only so far and she has to get up on the mountain itself and Drew Moss really shines here with the layouts and the look of it, especially with Nalty’s color work, as it’s just striking. I love that Ella gets her traditional costume but it’s not overplayed here or fanservice-oriented. It just is as she deals with what she finds, leading us to the other half of the title.
In Summary:
I’m always wary of too many Vampirella books being out at a time but they rarely end up working against each other or at cross purposes to the characters. And we get some really interesting creatives involved as well. Bellaire and Moss are firing on all cylinders here along with Nalty and Carey and the end result is a really engaging book. I love how Carey does a lot of the narration through recordings in a beautiful way that’s easy to read. And Nalty’s work on the colors is just striking in so many scenes as she brings Moss’ artwork to greater life. He’s captured Ella’s smile and I’m eager to see how well he does with her darker side. The story is still pretty wide open so I’m curious to see where it’ll go, especially since it has to stack up against a range of other crossovers over the last few years.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: September 4th, 2019
MSRP: $3.99
