Sunday, August 31, 2008

Vampirella 64


The cover for this issue is by Enrich featuring who else, but Vampirella. This issue features a whopping seven stories, all about Vampi. All seven are written by Gerry Boudreau. Gonzalo Mayo provides artwork for all seven, with an uncredited Carmine Infantino contributing to the first two. The stories are titled "The Manipulators", "The Eradicators", "The Vindicators", "The Intruders", "The Stalkers", "The Ironoclasts" and "The Survivors".

This is a very complicated overall storyline spanning about 70 pages but I'll try to summarize it as best as I can. Vampi is recruited to once again help the FBI Agent Spectum, who first appeared in issue 53. Vampi is blackmailed into assisting him with delivering a briefcase to a man who just happens to be dead when she gets there. Soon after Adam is kidnapped. Multiple characters are introduced, multiple ones which get killed. Vampi figures out that there is a tape within the briefcase which is what is really of importance. Her blood serum is kidnapped by yet another villain however, the Englishman, who originally created the tape, which contains a line which he needs to state every year to retain his eternal life. The tape also creates information about Chaos. The Englishman screws up his timeframes and dies before Vampi can get him the tape however. Pendragon meanwhile is apparantly hypnotized then goes into a coma while there are attempts on Conrad's life. It ends up however that Pendragon was part of an act, working with another agent. The true villain soon becomes apparant, Spectrum, who is actually evil and seeks to bring Chaos demons to Earth. He does so when Vampi gives him the tape for 2 million dollars. The tape is damaged however, which results in the demons running amock, contrary to Spectrum's plans. Vampi hunts him down and he is finished off. The final demon, Moloch is defeated by Vampi in the final part of the story.

While very complicated and convoluted, this is a fairly good story compared to the usual Vampirella fare.

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