The hunt for the missing pages gets underway.
Creative Staff:
Story: Thomas Sniegoski, Jeannine Acheson
Art: Daniel Maine
Colors: Francesca Cittarelli
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
What They Say:
The mysterious and deadly Bloodwing is killing all the Vampirellas throughout the fabric of reality—but who is he, and why is he doing this? It’s up to Vampirella to learn the secrets of Bloodwing and stop him.
Thanks to the Book of Prophecy (in a very unexpected way), Vampirella embarks on her most mind-bending adventure yet, traveling the various Threads of the Fabric to rally the Vampirellas of the multiple realities to join her in stopping the extermination of herself. First stop, an apocalyptic world transformed by a Chaos Plague. Will the Vampirella of this ravaged world heed our Vampirella’s warning, or will she too fall to the savagery of Bloodwing?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Following up on the ideas in the first issue, written by Thomas Sniegoski and Jeannine Acheson. Sniegoski, the continued expansion of Vampirella across the realities is an easy and fun place to go. The opening installment to this is certainly familiar to comic fans but it hits the right marks and it makes out well as Daniel Maine is a solid and strong artist with some really good layouts to be had here, though I think he can really try being even more creative as time goes on with this book. The characters look great and Francesca Cittarelli does a great job of taking his work to the next level with its color design.
With our Vampirella searching for Book’s Vampirella and for the pages missing with him, the two step into another world where things have gone wrong. The issue actually opens on some backstory, again showing how Bloodwing had fallen over the years until she was all that was left in her world, and how that allowed her to take control of things and to start hopping realities. In this one, we get a Vampirella that looks like Callisto from old X-Men comics as we’re in a world where chaos spread through missiles that either killed people or turned them into these things. The hunt to eliminate the last remaining cache of mankind is underway, but this world’s Vampirella has come across our Vampi and Book as they try to figure out what’s going on here. Ending up in their custody for a bit may not be the worst thing though as Bloodwing has already been through here and is trying to sabotage Vampirella.
This gives us some time with the two Vampirella’s talking about things and trying to find some common ground. It’s hard to believe the tale but Bloodwing has already been through here and tried to subvert things, so it’s welcome to see this world’s Vampirella take the time to listen to our Vampi and figure out what the truth is. It’s pretty in-character, thankfully. This ends up leading Vampi and Book to hunt down more pages that have been scattered, which is an amusing thing in itself as we get the dialogue about the artist and end up in a comic book store. It’s not unexpected but it plays well with the visual design for it all and leaves you wishing that these kinds of areas were still as vibrant as they once were.
In Summary:
There’s a lot to like here as Vampirella is more situated with the big picture that she’s facing and what needs to be done to deal with it, even if it doesn’t make too much sense. She’s not exactly trusting Book at this point as he’s not an unbiased source but she also knows how to get what she needs so she can start working on this mission now that it’s become reality. Book has some good material here and I enjoyed seeing more of Bloodwing’s downfall. Some elements of this new world were just a little meh, such as Vampirella’s main lackey in Prague, but I really liked this world’s Vampirella and wish we had more time with her here to establish her better.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: October 13th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
