Always pass on a third movie.
Creative Staff:
Story: David Avallone
Art: Silvia Califano
Colors: Walter Pereyra
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
What They Say:
In space, no one can hear your goofy sex puns! The Mistress of the Dark finds herself “alienated,” as her trip through the Multiverse of Movies lands Elvira aboard a certain doomed starship with a certain deadly stowaway. (No, it’s not the cat.) Come for the horror comedy, stay for the franchise fatigue in this Promethean effort by writer David Avallone (Elvira Meets Vincent Price, Bettie Page: Unbound) and artist Silvia Califano (Star Trek, Judge Dredd.)
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The most recent miniseries wrapped up with some good fun from David Avallone as Elvira was paired with Vincent Price, And with this series she’s moved on to some interesting things as her journey through various film-verses is happening, first with Psycho and Hitchcock fun and now with Stanley Kubrick. For this series, we get Silvia Califano on board for the artwork and this is my first time seeing their work. It’s definitely really good and fits this kind of property well and as the book progresses you get a sense that they’ve got an even better handle on Elvira and working her expressions a lot. Some properties take a bit of time to get a handle on but Califano nails it pretty quickly here and is sitting alongside the other greats that have cataloged Elvira’s shenanigans.
With Elvira being thrown into the original Alien film with this installment of the series, we get the science fiction horror take done pretty well. With that film being the whole haunted house in space thing, Elvira just drops in to blow everything up story-wise as she tries to clue them in on what’s coming. Of course, since she appeared out of nowhere and is wearing what she’s wearing, she spends a decent chunk of time in the brig – a brig that she didn’t even know the ship had. It’s fun in seeing how she rattles off upcoming events and plays with everyone’s names in a lot of ways until Ridley realizes that Elvira is right more than anything else and tries to get ideas from her as to what’s actually going. It is, as Elvira says, why she’s the only one that survives and ends up in multiple movies.
The book works through a good bit of action but like Elvira, I’m surprised Avallone waited as long as he did to bring in the big xenomorph. It’s amusing to see more of the crew survive this, at least initially, and to have a briefer run-in with the production crew as we’d seen that gag a few times already. The story moves pretty well and it works through a whole host of references and gags but there’s less material here to play with overall compared to some of the other tales. It doesn’t draw in on the Alien films overall but it does mention them, even if just briefly. It’s more about the referential stuff in general and then a lot of focus on the action with Elvira and Ridley working together. I do like that we get it all coming down to Mother at the end as that feels a lot more appropriate than it usually does.
In Summary:
Elvira definitely has a fun issue here and that’s just the plain simple truth. Avallone knows how to work this genre well and it delivers good on the action and laughs and lets Elvira be thrown to someplace new and have to deal with the issues of it. It just feels a bit lighter on the material in a way when there are more things that it could draw from. I enjoyed it a lot and the way Elvira handles the whole thing, especially in contrast to the previous issues that took place in the past with different ways women would handle situations, makes for an engaging bit for her since you see her developing quite the natural crush on Ridley. Good stuff all around as we get ready for some nightmare material next.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: August 10th, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
