Vampirella #670 // Review
She gets one last hug from her mother. Then it’s down into the mystic gateway under her house to wait for an astronaut and a talking rat. Okay: so it’s a weird life, but it’s Las oa weird death in Vampirella #670. Writer Christopher Priest takes a look at the next chapter in the life of a prominent vampire under the influence of artist/colorist Ergün Gündüz. It’s kind of a weird dreamy trip of a journey in which the title character has to make a really important decision. It's a really obvious one that will, nevertheless, make for a really interesting chapter in her life.
Vampirella has everything she wants. But she doesn’t. It’s only on the surface. It’s all a lie. The love. The community. The sense of purpose. It’s all a lie. And there’s this kid who has been Hanging around. Claims to be an echo...a paradox. And there are other problems as well. Vampirella must make a choice...either abandon everything that she loves or embrace the lie that he life is. It’s not an easy choice, but she’s going to have to make the obvious one. It’s going to be a devastating moment, but she’s going to live through it.
Priest handles the narrative and sort of a jaunty fashion. The story is a combination of scenes that all feel like rapid jump cuts from one moment to the next. There's a beautiful kind of poetry about it. But it's not enough. It's not enough to make it feel all that coherent. That being said, the stories in coherence is its greatest strength. What priest is doing is showing a reality that is fused with the term existing in and within the title character. It feels a bit confusing in places, but there's a reason for that. The title character is more than a bit confused in so many different places.
Gündüz frames some really striking imagery in the course of the story. Priest gives him of few opportunities to deliver some really interesting Yewells, which are firmly grounded in reality while still managing to be very, very surreal. There is no whole lot of physical aggression going on in the issue. Although there is enough of that to, keep the pages turning. Mostly it's just moody people dealing with moody situation that I have deeply surrealistic shadows drawn around them in the abstract. So it's important to deliver a sense of reality to ground all of the abstract. And he does a really good job of doing so. There's a lot going on in the emotional wives of these characters. It feels very well relayed to the page.
She's been around for a long time. And she has seen a lot. Priest is doing a good job of illustrating the complex convolutions in her life. The restlessness of the narrative is its own kind of horror. And it does feel suitable to the nature of the situation. It does, however, as though priest is going to have to settle into a more coherent narrative in order for this particular issue to have had the kind of impact that needs to have.
