Vampirella Helliday 2024 Special #1 // Review
There have been a series of murders at the north pole. Elves have been dropping dead with incriminating bite marks on their necks. It’s not a good situation at all. Mrs. Claus is very concerned about all the death. THere’s one elf who knows what to do in a situation like this: call-in a vampire hunter. THey find the best there is at what she does as Dynamite Comics presents Vampirella Helliday 2024 Special #1. Writer Frank Tieri writes a crude, little B-movie-style horror comedy story that is broguht to page and panel by the art team of Marianoe Benitez Chapo and Pasquale Qualano. Color comes to the page courtesy of Jorge Sutil.
Vampirella is actually something of a vampire herself. Naturally she’s going to be really good at tracking-down the vampire who is killing all of the elves. It’s not going to be easy for him to manage much of anything, but he knows that he’s going to have to do something. It doesn’t look good, though. It would appear as though the vampire in question might just be the big guy in charge of everything. So...Santa is a vampire now. What’s the worst that could happen?
Tieri has a clever mash-up with a vamp Santa being hunted by a woman notorious for dressing in a way that simply would ’t work for any other mortal in the arctic. There’s a real potential for mystical yuletide darkness to ascend upon the page. It’s too bad that he has to go for the cheesiest horror humor imaginable. A more sophisticated hand could have done quite a bit with the premise that might have had an opportunity to dive a bit further into the darkness. Instead, it’s just kind of goofy and dull-witted.
The art team plays with traditional imagery that mixes Christmas appeal with something else altogether. The art team seems more or less ready for the script to dive deeper into the darkenss of the folklore, but they’re perfectly happy to be doing silly things with iconic Santa imagery that never really lvives-up to its full potential. A big part of making cheesy comedy work is delivering it to the page with a totally striaght face. They couldh ave exaggereated the weirdness of it and tried to outdo the wakiness of thescript, but instead they’re clearly moving in a direction with it that is meant to take it just seriously enough to deliver all of the humor with a high degree of fidelity to the heart of the humor.
Given the fact that he’s one of the most popular public domain characters in existence, it’s entirely likely that Santa has been a vampire before at one point or another. The challenge is to make it all work in just the right way to have it all come together in a way that might feel cozy and festive. It’s too ad that the issue has to come out the week of Christmas...it only really feels in season for the week that it’s out and then...it vanishes into the silliness at the en d of a very eventful year.
