Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Vampirella 95


An all series issue of Vampirella, featuring a cover by Ken Kelly of Vampi tied up in a octopus like creature's chambers.

Our Vampi segment for this issue is "Plague of Vampires" by Rudy Nebres (art) and Rich Margopoulos. In keeping with Margopoulos's usual fare, this episode references multiple prior segments. It features a deformed man who learns of a previous stay of Vampi in the hospital so he creates clones of Vampi but they get out and start attacking people. Margopoulos and Nebres fail yet again to put out a high quality Vampi story although its at least not as bad as the usual fare.

"The Initiation", the third segment in the Cassandra St. Knight series is up next. As usual it features art by Auraleon and story by Rich Margopoulos. This segment provides us with some background information on Cassandra, about the death of her husband Jeff whom she did nothing to save when the two of them were in a car accident. During a test of her skills she's attacked for real. A fairly long story at 16 pages.

Third is "Reflections in Blood!" by Jose Ortiz (art) and Rich Margopoulos (story). An old enemy of Conrad Van Helsing who was reponsible for killing his wife and blinding him traps Adam in a mirror world. Pantha goes in and saves him and they escape the mirror world.

Last is "The Fox" by Luis Bermejo (art) and Nicola Cuti (story). This is the start of a new series in Vampirella, which is a spinoff of a story originally printed in Creepy #100, where a chinese princess had the ability to turn into a fox and used it to save herself when her uncle tried to take over the throne. This story continues from that one, where our hero, Ming Toi befriends a woodsman and is confronted by her uncle yet again. She tricks him into thinking she's his daughter, until the real daughter shows up at the end.

A so-so issue. Cassanda St. Knight and The Fox are fairly good segments this time while Vampi and Pantha aren't.

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