She’s a powerful warrior who has faced many, many monsters and forces of darkness. Now she’s going to have to face something much more menacing and devastating than anything that she’s ever encountered before. She’s going to have to face herself in Vampirella--Dark Reflections #2. The writing team of Tom Sniegoski and Jeanine Asheson are joined by artist Daniel Maine and colorist Francesa Cittarelli for a dark and dense look into the heart of one of action horror comics’ most enduring dark heroes. The action is clean. The horror is dense. The atmosphere is immersive. It’s one of the best single issue on the rack this week. 

One Vampirella serves the forces of chaos. She serves Queen Tenebris. The other Vampirella is kind of trying to rid the world of the chaos. So naturally they’re going to have to fight each other. There are other issues, though. It’s a very dark world that the hero finder herself immersed in.  Even if she’s able to survive an attack by a darker version of herself, she’s going to have to deal with a hell of a lot else...including Tenebris herself and her own haunted past which seems irrevocably complicated by recent events. 

Sniegoski has a firm sense of dark action in a horror universe that is made all the darker due to things getting very, very bad for its title character. The world has become quite dark and Vampirella is standing against it. The contrast between herself, her past and a darker version of herself serves the story well. There is almost too much going on in the issue to give nearly enough time to any one given moment, but Snieegoski has a solid understanding of exactly how fast the story needs to keep going in order to maintain the attention of the reader.

The visuals are remarkably impressive in places. Asheson frames action and drama with punch and persuasion. There are some strikingly complicated emotional moments in the course of the comic book...but there are also quite a few moments of overwhelming action. Asheson keeps it all well-balanced in visuals that are aided immeasurably by the color work of Cittarelli, who gives the horror such dazzlingly dark depth. It can often be difficult to capture the precise lighting of fighting at night...but Cittarelli nails the darkness of night brilliantly in a number of remarkably well-executed panels. 

The story as presented in the second issue of the current series continues to make a powerful case for Vampirella continuing on indefinitely into the future. She’s been through so much over the course of the past few decades in the hands of Dynamite Comics. It would be easy to fall into restless repetition of what works...but Sniegoski and company are clearly trying to reach for something new in a character who has been through so much in the recent past.  It all feels so well-executed in the second issue of her current series. 

Grade: A