Dynamite Entertainment 2019
Written by Thomas Sniegoski
Illustrated by Michael Sta. Maria
Coloured by Omi Remalante Jr.
Lettered by Troy Peteri
The future is Now! Tom Sniegoski’s return to Vampirella continues as the Vengeance series battles into its third issue. This issue Haemorrhage prepares to strike and is reunited with Mistress Nyx while Pendragon attempts to restore Vampirella to her former self! But, will the Daughter of Drakulon be strong enough – or wilful enough – to face this new combined threat and restore order to a world gone dead!
Good golly this is great stuff and while Tom is one of those writers whom I adore and whose work I first discovered in The Menagerie novels. This led me to seek out his work and now here we are with this and by god my recent love affair with Vampirella is only getting that much stronger. Sometimes when we see the whole future could be this stuff it is kind of wonky and that's just my person opinion it always seems to get confusing. I love this because of the possibility that it's something that could have happened and not a definite. Plus it is interesting to see that Vampirella can regenerate after what she had gone through. I like seeing that perhaps (perhaps perhaps, you won't admit you love me and so how an I ever to know?) there are no real limits when it comes to her, what she do and what she can recover from.
I like the way that this story is being told. The story & plot development as seen through the sequence of events that are unfolding as well as how the reader learns information is done in such an expertly fashion. The way we see how all the pieces get moved around the board here so that they are in places they don't expect themselves to be is exciting. The character development that we see here is spectacular and the newly restored and extremely nature of Vampirella is on display so beautifully. The pacing here is phenomenal and I really like the way that twists and turns we see help create this ebb & flow in such ways that it makes reading this a pure pleasure. The story itself is beyond what I could have hoped for and the players and their personal drama that layers this through and through in a fashion that would make any writer of daytime soap opera's jealous.
The interiors here are gorgeous and I love the way that we see the linework and how it's varying weights are bing utilised to bring out this level of attention to detail. The way we see bodies of these folks, women and especially men is rather sensational and while he maybe a bad guy our big blond built like brick shithouse is a work of art unto it himself. I love the way that we see the composition inside the panels and how backgrounds are utilised to create depth perception, scale and this sense of size and scope to the book. Plus by George the colour work in the trees or the blood, anything that has colour it doesn't matter, how it all looks is masterful to say the least. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows a marvellous eye for storytelling. The interiors here are totally spectacular.
There are some moments within this that piqued my curiosity more than I thought they would like when they encounter the rotting walking corpses. I love how Tom crafts his stories and how we get to see how complicated life can be when one gets what they want and then some. I like the whole idea of everything we're seeing in how the overall idea of the underlying message, at least as how I see it. The world of Vampirella never ceases to amaze me as do the creators who bring her to life.