The fun of ending humanity.
Creative Staff:
Story: Ray Fawkes
Art: Alvaro Sarraseca
Colors: Salvatore Aiala
Letterer: Tom Napolitano
What They Say:
The unholy alliance you prayed would never happen! For countless generations, the fight between good and evil has been fought, as much behind the scenes as in plain view. Unbeknownst to the world at large, one force has stood as a safeguard against the potential triumph of evil and the unleashing of the apocalypse: The 36. Now, someone is after them, a creature of evil known as Purgatori, and the only thing standing in her way is Vampirella. So with all of existence hanging in the balance, what could possibly bring these two enemies to join forces? Hint: Whatever it is, it must be really bad.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The world of Vampirella stories is wide and vast and I’m always game for a new property crossover release. With this miniseries, Ray Fawkes takes the handle for things and I’m excited by that as he’s written a lot of fringe books that I like in the mainstream. The book is a bit awkward to start here but it gets into a good groove as it progresses and sets up plenty. With Alvaro Sarraseca joining him to handle the artwork with Salvatore Aiala on the color design, there’s a lot to like in bringing these characters to life and some of the design bits as well as the color presentation. It’s a solid-looking book that has room to expand with some action scenes to come but largely handles things well here.
The premise is basic enough here in that taking place before the events of Vampirella #0 from a few years back, Lilith has decided to toy with the world in order to get a rise out of Vampirella. Though she’s not a believer in god she’s certainly going to muck with its creations and she’s intent on finding as many of a special group of thirty-six humans that are alive at any given time that embodies what is good in the world. Their existence supposedly keeps god from simply striking down humanity as a whole and moving onto some other project. Using Undine to help find some of them at first, it sets up a basic kind of two-sides thing that Vampirella is going to have to do her best to defend against once she realizes what she’s truly up against.
It doesn’t take long for her to do that overall as she gets caught up in some sylph shenanigans that she stumbles across but it also introduces her to Purgatori from the Chaos comics. Purgatori’s kind of along for the ride and see this as something she needs to be involved in and Vampirella’s game to go along with it, not sensing anything that she really needs to worry about. We don’t get much on who Purgatori is at this point but she’s not a key player in the series just yet, rather just there for some of the setup and to add some appeal to the page. That said, Fawkes executes this well enough and puts Vampirella into the position of knowing that Lilith is involved and that’s all it really takes to set her off.
In Summary:
I’m not quite sure what to make of this series yet. At the moment, our two title characters are on the same page but it’s easy to see how Lilith can turn things around so that they’re foes. Vampirella feels pretty on point here with how Fawkes presents here and the little time with Purgatori feels about right as well. I really like Sarraseca’s artwork here and Aiala does a really great color design for the property so that it reads well. But the story itself is pretty basic and a good old-fashioned race against time. It has all the potential it needs to at least be fun.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: March 24th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
