Vampirella Archives Volume Three

Vampirella Archives #3

by Bill Warren (Publisher)

Collecting issues #15-21 of the original Vampirella magazine series, Dynamite continues it's resurrection of classic horror! Some of Vampirella's most memorable stories, including the classic tale "...And To Be A Bride Of Chaos"

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Horror, Supernatural, Fantasy, Aliens, Adventure

380 pages, Hardcover

First published January 4, 2011

About the author

Bill Warren was an American film historian and critic, one of the leading authorities on science fiction, horror, and fantasy films.

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful B&W art and some fantastic adult comic writing. This was one of the first "comics" really aimed at adult readers post Comic Code. Recommended

[Ruz El · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finished this one back in December and forgot to pull it off my reading list. Which speaks volumes to how dull it is. Starts off not bad, but then everything just gets dull and uninspired. I do mean everything, from the Vampirella serial to the back up short stories. I'm failing to see what was so great about this series that it continues on today.

[Kris Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Warren magazines are a mixed bag in terms of quality, although this series is much better three books in. Vampirella the character has become more three-dimensional and less cheesecakey. The weaker stories were the ones with Vampirella in them. The better ones were the generic Warren Horror stories which would be interchangeable with either of the other titles, Creepy and Eerie. These were, of course, variations of old Pre-Code Horror comics such as those found in EC, Harvey, etc. of two decades prior. I don't need the wheel reinvented, just give me some solid old school Horror and I am happy. Even though this was a magazine which eschewed the Comics Code Authority of the day, there is little in the way of gore. Most of the taboos found here which would have raised the ire of the CCA would be slight nudity, excessive faux-occult references, and vampires and the like.

Gorilla My Dreams (issue #16) is one of those tried and true Horror stories which has been told so many times that it is almost impossible to pinpoint where it originally came from. I'm going to go with the old saying that all cliches come from either The Bible or Shakespeare. Surely this can be found in either one, right? (Insert winky-faced smiley guy.)

This book is filled to the brim with talent. Many of the writers, such as Don McGregor and Doug Moench, would go on to great acclaim over at Marvel (and later DC as well for Moench). On the art side there are fewer “names” but no less talent. Artists such as Esteban Maroto and Luis Garcia offer stunning photo-realistic artwork decades prior to Photoshop. Some of these cats are awe inspiring, and I can't help but wonder why they didn't stick around. Maybe they left comics to pursue more lucrative graphic design or commercial artwork.

The concerns of young people of the time, such as drugs, feminism, nuclear annihilation, and the overall anxiety and sense of foreboding of the era are all captured brilliantly here. I tend to read old comics with the era that they were written in in mind. Some of this material holds up in 2013 by 2013 standards, other stuff is lovably dated and charming and quaint.

There are some real problems with this book, though. Before we end the review portion, I must give credit to the following fine human beings for their invaluable assistance:
Special thanks to Aussie Stu from the Masterworks Message Board for furnishing me with high resolution TIFs of the two missing story pages.
Special thanks to KOBE 27 from the Masterworks Message Board for furnishing scans of the two missing text pages.

This book is missing several pages. I have emailed and Tweeted Dynamite Entertainment about this and have yet to get a response.
Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I have obtained scans of the missing story pages and printed them out and tipped them in myself. The following pages are missing:
Page 17 of ...And Be A Bride Of Chaos from issue 16 (Page 22 of the issue proper).

Page 8 of Death In The Shadows from issue 17. This page is the climax of the story for crying out loud! (Page 41 of the issue proper.)

Second page of the Scarlett Letters column in issue 20.

Second page of the Vampi's Flames fan story column from issue 20.

So there they are...the four missing pages! Just print them out, trim them accordingly, and tip them in! Thanks again to Aussie Stu, who provided super high quality TIFs of the story pages, and KOBE 27, who did the JPEGs of the text pages. You guys rock!
Dynamite had three courses of action that they could have done to rectify these errors:
Recalled the entire run and pulped it and/or manually glued in tip-in sheets of the missing pages.
Offered high resolution PDFs on their site for people to print and then tip-in themselves, or...
Done #2 and then reprint the complete stories with an apology in Volume 4. NONE of these things happened. Dynamite is clowntown and I know of many folks who have quit this line of books because of the fiasco that is Vampirella Archives Volume 3.
Dynamite also screwed up by not including the Vampirella 1972 Annual, which had an all-new cover and a brand new 15 page story, The Origin Of Vampirella. This story was reprinted in issue 46, albeit with a new script.

It would be nice if a company doing a high end series of Archives like this, which are by design completist be all, end all editions, would do 10 minutes of research online when mapping these books out. Dynamite should also pay more attention when mapping these books out. People make mistakes, but owning up to them is part of being human. Dynamite has lost a lot of goodwill with the fans of these books.

Gripe for Volume 2 that I did not include in that book's review years ago: The story Fiends In The Night from issue 10 was not included in that book because it featured Uncle Creepy. This is at least understandable as Dynamite's license does not include that character, I am just mentioning it as a point of reference for the OCD completists out there.

Curiouser and curiouser...this was found on Page 77, in one of the stories missing a page. Note how the *box refers to the Creepy Classics Trade Paperback from the '90s rather than the original issue. Is it possible that Harris did paste ups? Or is this the case of altered film? Or is it that Dynamite are simply incompetent boobs?

[Brandt · Rating 2 out of 5]

So of course the very existence of Vampirella is problematic because she's a sexed up alien vampire that appeals to the worst hormonal impulses of young men and teenaged boys, but setting all that aside, in the previous volume of the Vampirella Archives, Vampirella went from being a "host" of the "horror" comics in the magazine to having a regular starring feature in her own book (novel I know.) In Volume 2, all of the Vampirella stories were penned by amazing Archie Goodwin, as are the first few in this volume, with all art done by Jose Gonzales, who is considered the Vampirella artists. But then Goodwin left Warren Publishing and apart from stories from a young Doug Moench (later known for his work on Batman and Master of Kung Fu) there isn't a lot to write home about here. And if documenting Warren losing Goodwin wasn't bad enough, the publisher of these archive volumes (Dynamite Publishing) was really sloppy on editing these volumes, as one story was literally missing its last pages (I have this knack for getting comics from the library that assholes have ripped pages out of...in this case, Dynamite didn't print the pages to be ripped out) and I had to go the the Internet to find it. I also found out that another story was missing pages, but such was the (lack of) quality of the story that I didn't realize they were missing.

Another weakness is the actual Vampirella story arc's reliance on Dracula. I'm sure even in the early 70s, Dracula had been totally played out, and I would say that even the great Goodwin may have been taking a shortcut by making the descendants of Van Helsing a part of the Vampirella story, but at least Archie's stories had her fighting the agents of an evil god called Chaos. Once Goodwin bolts, the arc turns into this ridiculous Dracula redemption story (relegating Vampirella to second class status) that feels like the horror equivalent of a Louis C.K. "comeback" and all of that entails--including the rape whistle jokes.

In short, you might want to check this out to see Archie Goodwin's last hurrah at Warren (even though you would be better served to check out his work on Blazing Combat instead) but the rest of it you can pretty much skip and not miss a thing.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one less than volume two and that's due to a few things: 1. The main Vampi stories are getting dull. How long do we need to hear about her drinking some serum every 24 hours to keep her from being a blood-crazed vampire? How often do we need to see the older Van Helsing change his mind about how much he trusts her? Is Dracula really an alien that came to Earth who used to be a good guy? Really? 2. Half of the backup stories have gotten boring. One of the repeating series is called "Tomb of the Gods" and it is a text-heavy mess. Despite these two big things, I think that future volumes can still be good. Especially when they move into dark fantasy, those stories are a lot of fun. Artists that are great are Jose Gonzalez, Jerry Grandenetti, Aurelion, Bill DuBay, Nebot, and Pat Boyette. And even though they are great artists, I don't much care for Felix Mas and Esteban Maroto, although I might change my mind if they were inked differently.