Vampzilla for the win.
Creative Staff:
Story: Thomas Sniegoski, Jeannine Acheson
Art: Daniel Maine
Colors: Francesca Cittarelli
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
What They Say:
New Vampirellas abound as our thrilling saga wends through time, space, and everything in between!. Vampirella, Book, Baby Prague, Lilith, and The Vamp are fighting for their lives in a most inhospitable place from long, long ago. And with a new reality comes a new Vampirella! Introducing… Vamp-Por, the Vampirella from the dawn of time with dark secrets of her own, and Futurella, the Sci-Fi Vampirella hellbent on helping save the Fabric of reality created by the Artist. But has Bloodwing finally gained the upper hand in her quest to reshape all existence in her twisted image?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Thomas Sniegoski and Jeannine Acheson worked a lot of things into the first couple of issues with the setup and then showed a few different timelines and how they operate, which gives us an insight into different kinds of Vampirella’s. The last issue had things feeling like they were coming together better as time went on and it “made” more sense with all the progression so that you could get a handle on it. Daniel Maine continues to be 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.
Unfortunately, even as things felt like they were coming together, this installment feels like it’s just throwing everything at the wall and letting it all go wherever it wants. With Bloodwind as the main opponent, we see how she continues to burn through things and people as she can, resulting in a lot of chaos. I enjoyed the absurdity of Vampzilla that we get at the beginning of this while at the same really liking the innocence of Lilith that we get from time to time as she struggles with this whole fight. This issue also gives us a few more characters in the back half as things become even more chaotic as there’s a dinosaur and a futuristic Vampirella of sorts that’s focused on dealing with saving the timeline and stopping Bloodwind from destroying everything in her quest to find the artist, kill him, and become god.
But it’s just told in this kind of way where it’s more and more thrown at the reader in a way that just doesn’t make it friendly, at least to me. There’s so much going on so quickly and without a chance to breathe that you’re like Lilith in saying that it never stops. We do get some downtime toward the end here as the group finally just talks with our time patrol character, but there are just so many disparate versions of Vampirella here at this point and it’s just moving along going for bigger and bigger action set pieces that you kind of tune out who is who and their story. Especially since them get shifted to the background in favor of others. Book at least gets a little interesting time here as Bloodwind figures out a way to try and get what she wants from him, and we do lose one of our members along the way, but it’s just a weak installment.
In Summary:
Similar to Sonjaversal, I’m somewhat frustrated by Vampiverse because the concept is easy to run with and do things with. We’ve had it before, in fact, with a previous series that involved the Archie characters of all things. This series has a fun idea to it with the Artist and all that jazz, but the execution is just too much, too fast, without a chance to connect with any of these characters that are introduced. It’s just a constant third-act kind of things from a big blockbuster action film. The artwork continues to be one of the big pluses here with what it offers as I really like the various takes we get of the cast and some of the action itself, but that can’t make the book as a whole. I think there’s a lot of potential here but it may not come from this run of it.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: December 8th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
