Vampirella #1 (September 1969)
"Vampirella of Draculon"
Forrest J. Ackerman-Tom Sutton
First-time Vampirella reader here, kids! Talk about "forbidden fruit"... I've mentioned before that I never had a single black & white magazine as a kid growing up in the 1970s, and I guarantee you if I had it would not have been an issue of Vampirella. You think Mom was going to let a mag like this get into the grocery cart? Think again. I recently purchased the Vampirella: The Essential Warren Years trade, just so I could begin to bring some reviews of this well-known (by everyone but me, apparently) material. It's titillating, to say the least. And the art - fabulous from cover to cover. But we'll perhaps get to some more of that later. Let's check out Vampi's 1st appearance now.
That dialogue box... To say it is rife with double entendres would be overstating the obvious. Are you struck with a sense that facially Vampirella looks like she's about 13 years old? That may not be unintentional...
100-Word Review:
Drakulon is a planet where blood flows as water does on Earth. And as Earthlings need water to survive, so do the inhabitants of Drakulon require blood. A world of vampires, we’d call them, Drakulon’s people have fangs, wings, the power to turn invisible – the whole vampiric nine yards! One day a spaceship crash lands, and Vampirella goes to investigate. Attacked by the astronauts, Vampirella bites back. Discovering that the men are basically founts of blood, she kills her assailants. But upon entering the ship she spies several men in a hibernation tank… and a feeding frenzy commences!
The Good: Wow. Not sure where to begin with this review. Usually I'm overflowing with praise when I write these things, but I can't say that here. I'll give a nod to Tom Sutton's art, which is pretty nice (for many reasons), but I'm afraid most of my time is going to be spent in the two categories that follow. I thought it was interesting, from an evolutionary standpoint, how Sutton drew Vampirella as some sort of dark, insatiable sprite. My guess is that for most readers, our mind's eye images of the character run more akin to the Frazetta painting on the magazine's cover. The images here seem more suitable for Playboy. Speaking of Sutton's art - I usually don't provide scans of complete stories, but as this one is so short it is presented here in its entirety. And no inker was listed, so I have to assume that we're seeing the whole Sutton enchilada.
The Bad: Now I have some room to move. I'm unsure of what I just read (I'm writing this on 12/20/18 while home from school caring for my wife after some foot surgery she had). Was it an origin story? Was it just a teaser to hook the reader, designed to make said reader bloodthirsty for more? Was it softcore porn? Or... am I choosing D) All of the above? Yes! - x4. Forrie Ackerman would have been about my age when he wrote this story; if I didn't have access online to his biographical information to make that determination, I'd have assumed the writer of this comic was a flowering adolescent, not a 53-year old man. This story, as you can see, is an odd mixture of T&A and vampires, with the fantasy of a beautiful dhampir attacking a man. From the opening partially-nude scene to the low-rise leggings and back dimples, this tale just oozes sex and sexual gratification. I'm not sure I'd have been in the market for this even when I was a flowering adolescent (oh, who am I kidding? I would have been). But to read it now with 52-year old eyes, I see it for what it was. That aside, the script is very crude - and I don't mean in content. The quality is low - some of that dialogue is of the quality you probably wrote in your notebook in study hall when you were in the 9th grade. Which makes me think all the more that plot and payoff were secondary to presentation - presentation of all that T&A. I'm writing most of this tongue-in-cheek, but overall it's just not a good story and was written very sophomorically.
I also found the pairing of vampires and sci-fi astronauts a bit odd in this case. Call me out for categorizing the suspensions of my disbelief, but I felt it was a strange series of circumstances. This coming from a guy who's read his fair share of Steve Gerber yarns. However, given that there was no pretense that this was a superhero mag, the genres represented (horror and scifi) seem a fair enough mashup.
The Ugly: There's not really anything to add here - "Vampirella of Draculon" most likely isn't the worst thing I've ever read. So I'll just leave one more quibble, simply for the sake of filling this space. As you see in the title, Draculon is spelled with a "C". However, once you get to the actual story it is spelled with a "K". Just seems sloppy to me. Sloppy like a vampire's kiss on your neck...
In fairness to that one bad day we've all had, that first impression that went awry, I'll be back to this collection. My curiosity is now piqued concerning the duration of popularity of Vampirella. This beginning could not be as bad as I've perceived. A future reading seems a must - especially given the quality of the art, as stated above. I'll be sure to report back with further thoughts, once that happens.
