Vampirella 77

Here's another issue of Vampirella featuring Barbara Leigh on the cover. This issue's Vampi story, "Shadow of the Dragon" is by Gonzalo Mayo (art) and Bill Dubay (story). This is a rare actionless Vampi story, in which Vampi is barely even featured at all. Our entire group of heroes are in Hong Kong, where some mysterious murders have taken place. While Vampi and Pantha are touring the city, and Pendragon is getting in trouble at a local bar, Adam and Conrad are told of mysterious murders taking place in the city, and how they may be tied into legends of Dragons and events that happen in the year of the Dragon. That's about it from this entry, which continues into the next issue.

First backup for this story is "The Night of the Yeti" by Russ Heath (art) and Michael Fleischer (story). A man falls off a cliff while hiking in the himalyas while his wife and colleague watch. The man survives the fall, but is forced to hike for days to get back to civilization. Along the way he confronts a bear in a cave and has his throat slashed and his winter clothes destroyed. He wears the bear's pelt, making him look like a yeti. He eventually finds his wife and colleague, who desires her, and she is accidently killed when he is shot at. The shots cause an avalanche, burying his collegue. Our protagonist continues the wander the himalayas, becoming the yet if legend. Very good art by Heath, as usual.

Third story is "The Night the Birds Fell" by Moreno Casares (art) and Nicola Cuti (story). Casares was a very good Spanish artist whose style was nothing like that of the other Spanish artists who worked at Warren. This story features an air traffic controller terrified of birds who goes on a rampage at an airport, resulting in planes crashing into each other, causing a horrific disaster at the airport.

Fourth is "Siren of the Seekonk" by Auraleon (art) and Jonathan Thomas (story). A man falls in love with a water woman he finds by a bridge. With his life crumbling around him, the man decides to kill his ex-wife and feed her flesh to the water woman. Upon finding that she already has a mate, he loses it and jumps off the bridge, trying to join them.

Next is "Weird Wolf", with art by Jeff Easley (a rare solo appearance by him, he usually is paired with Val Mayerik) and story by Gerry Boudreau. This short story, at only 3 pages, features a civilized werewolf who is pursued by the sheriff of a small town. The sheriff is able to take out the werewolf by tricking him into using a gun that fires backwards, killing him while not causing the sheriff to turn into a werewolf himself when killing him.

Last is "Futura House is Not a Home" by Isidro Mones (art) and Nicola Cuti (story). Mones was a terrific artist during his original run with Warren from 1973-1976. After a couple of year absense from Warren he returned for a little while, but his art had declined tremendously. This is one of those stories. Its unfortunate, as he was quite a good artist, with a very realistic style during his original run. Anyway, this story features a family testing a new futuristic home. It ends up that the computer running the house has been creating robot clones of the family member in a plot by the president to replace the entire populace with easy to manipulate robots.

Overall, a slightly above average issue. No particularly great stories (although Thomas's is quite a good one), but at the same time no lousy ones.