Thunder
10-21-2011, 03:30 PM
So . . . seems like some of us on this forum are pretty negative about the handling Harris gave to Vampirella – And we’ve been pretty negative about Dynamite’s handling as well. That said, I’ve been going back and rereading my old Warren era Vampirella magazines . . . and there’s a fair amount of stuff to bitch about there too. What follows is a short list of things that bug me about the Warren era Vampirella:
1. Issue 2: The Vampirella story in issue 2 is awful. It’s meant to be fun and campy – it’s not. It repeats many of the same jokes from issue one. The art sucks. And it’s little more than an advertisement for the Vampirella Aurora Model being hawked in the back of the magazine. The “campy” aspect of the story and the poor execution must be the reason Vampirella would take hiatus from a regular story until some 6 or seven issues later . . . So Warren could relaunch the more serious series. Quick trivia: In this story Vampirella is given her first pseudonym (never to be used again), what was it?
2. Conrad Van Helsing’s ESP: CV’s ESP was an okay plot device when used sparingly. Unfortunately, with later issues it was used as a poor device for story exposition and got sillier and sillier. It was used too frequently to “solve the problem” and became a too easy fall-back-device, when all else failed. It was also irritating that CV could tell things that were happening elsewhere in the world, across time and space, etc. . . but he remained unable to tell when Vampirella was telling him the truth, or when Adam was lying . . . ( a little ESP goes a long way)
3. Exposition: a lot happened in Warren storys – but sometimes the action was rushed. Too often, back story – explanations about motivation – plot jumps would happen in one or two panels. Exposition could often be rushed and often relied on short-cut plot devices (see Conrad Van Helsing’s ESP above)
4. Dracula’s origin: Dracula from Draculon? Dumb, dumb, dumb. And the Jor-El / Kal-El similarities are just painful.
5. Pantha’s origin. Pantha from Draculon? Dumb, dumb, dumb. Apparently in the Warren universe, if you weren’t from Earth, than you had to come from Draculon.
6. Pantha’s story-line (after she joined the Vampirella regular series). When the Pantha stories appeard as a back-up series to Vampirella, they were dark and seedy and full of mystery. Unfortunately, when Pantha joined the Vampirella series to be her side-kick – and they both jetted off to Hollywood, the stories got really silly. And Pantha became a flighty “party-girl” bimbo. Pantha got slightly interesting again when she ran off with Adam Van Helsing and had her own back up series again . . . but her stories never recaptured the dark and moody tone of the earlier ones.
7. Jose Gonzalez sucked!: HA! Gottcha. Okay Jose Gonzalez drew Vampirella beautifully – he set the tone for the raven haired beauty . . . and he set the bar very high. Adam Van Helsing never looked better than when Gonzalez illustrated him. . . but let’s face it, Gonzalez could not draw monsters . . . with one or two exceptions his monsters look silly and not at all scary. And lord, action sequences were often painful too – especially Pendragon running (why did he always look like he was trying to make the letter “v” with his arms when he ran?).
1. Issue 2: The Vampirella story in issue 2 is awful. It’s meant to be fun and campy – it’s not. It repeats many of the same jokes from issue one. The art sucks. And it’s little more than an advertisement for the Vampirella Aurora Model being hawked in the back of the magazine. The “campy” aspect of the story and the poor execution must be the reason Vampirella would take hiatus from a regular story until some 6 or seven issues later . . . So Warren could relaunch the more serious series. Quick trivia: In this story Vampirella is given her first pseudonym (never to be used again), what was it?
2. Conrad Van Helsing’s ESP: CV’s ESP was an okay plot device when used sparingly. Unfortunately, with later issues it was used as a poor device for story exposition and got sillier and sillier. It was used too frequently to “solve the problem” and became a too easy fall-back-device, when all else failed. It was also irritating that CV could tell things that were happening elsewhere in the world, across time and space, etc. . . but he remained unable to tell when Vampirella was telling him the truth, or when Adam was lying . . . ( a little ESP goes a long way)
3. Exposition: a lot happened in Warren storys – but sometimes the action was rushed. Too often, back story – explanations about motivation – plot jumps would happen in one or two panels. Exposition could often be rushed and often relied on short-cut plot devices (see Conrad Van Helsing’s ESP above)
4. Dracula’s origin: Dracula from Draculon? Dumb, dumb, dumb. And the Jor-El / Kal-El similarities are just painful.
5. Pantha’s origin. Pantha from Draculon? Dumb, dumb, dumb. Apparently in the Warren universe, if you weren’t from Earth, than you had to come from Draculon.
6. Pantha’s story-line (after she joined the Vampirella regular series). When the Pantha stories appeard as a back-up series to Vampirella, they were dark and seedy and full of mystery. Unfortunately, when Pantha joined the Vampirella series to be her side-kick – and they both jetted off to Hollywood, the stories got really silly. And Pantha became a flighty “party-girl” bimbo. Pantha got slightly interesting again when she ran off with Adam Van Helsing and had her own back up series again . . . but her stories never recaptured the dark and moody tone of the earlier ones.
7. Jose Gonzalez sucked!: HA! Gottcha. Okay Jose Gonzalez drew Vampirella beautifully – he set the tone for the raven haired beauty . . . and he set the bar very high. Adam Van Helsing never looked better than when Gonzalez illustrated him. . . but let’s face it, Gonzalez could not draw monsters . . . with one or two exceptions his monsters look silly and not at all scary. And lord, action sequences were often painful too – especially Pendragon running (why did he always look like he was trying to make the letter “v” with his arms when he ran?).