Vampirella: The Essential Warren Years Volume 1

Vampirella: The Essential Warren Years, Volume 1 by Archie Goodwin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Vampirella: The Essential Warren Years Volume 1 collects material from Vampirella #1-2, 7-8, and 11-37.

I learned of Vampirella's existence decades ago as a horny teenager thumbing through Wizard magazine. Since I've been attempting to fill in some comics blindspots the last couple years, I picked this one up.

Vampirella is an alien from the dying planet of Drakulon, a planet where all surface liquid more closely resembles hemoglobin than water. After jumping aboard a rocket, Vampirella finds herself on Earth with a lust for blood! Yeah, I know Vampi's origin was tweaked decades later so her story more closely resembles that of every other vampire story ever but this version has some Bronze Age charm.

After landing a job as an assistant to alcoholic stage magician Pendragon, Vampi spends a lot of time going up against the Cult of Chaos and pining over Adam Van Helsing, descendant of the legendary vampire hunter. She and her friends go up against zombies, Dracula, Lovecraftian horrors, and all sorts of other stuff.

The stories within have a host of authors, the most notable being Len Wein, Archie Goodwin, and Steve Englehart. Jose Gonzalez does the bulk of the art and it is a sight to behold. The stories are average for the time period, nothing earth-shattering. Joe Gonzalez draws a sexy alien vampire but he doesn't take a lot of short cuts to do it, conveying sexiness with facial expressions for the most part.

This book surprised me in a lot of ways. I was expecting way more gratuitous T&A and sleaze in general. I did not expect it to feel like a Bronze Age Marvel book but that's what it most reminded me of. Once you get used to Vampirella's skimpy costume, there really isn't much in the way of sexual content until the last 40 pages or so. Another thing that surprised me was that Vampirella doesn't go on a lot of feeding frenzies, trying to subsist on a serum that sates her appetites. She frequently takes a backseat to the male characters, in fact.

While I'm glad I read Vampirella: The Essential Warren Years Volume 1, I don't know that I'll be in a hurry to read the next volume when it is released. Three out of five coked up alien vampires.

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