Vampirella debuted in 1969 in a black & white magazine titled simply VAMPIRELLA. With a stunning new cover by the legendary Frank Frazetta, Vampirella #1 quickly made publishing history. Vampirella appeared in this magazine format throughout the 1970s. Many of these classic stories were illustrated by the legendary artist Jose Gonzalez and have remained quite popular to the present day. After a brief publishing hiatus, Vampirella returned in 1992 in a blockbuster new color comic book format. She quickly regained her reigning status as the queen of all female characters! Since the early 90s, Vampirella has appeared in a new color issue each and every month, written and illustrated by top artistic talents worthy of Vampirella's rich legacy! Every issue of Vampirella is a good point to start reading, with a "Story So Far" recap to bring new readers up to speed.
During her thirty-year history, a number of stunning models have portrayed Vampirella in the flesh! Playboy Playmate Barbara Leigh was the first beauty to bring Vampirella to life, amply filling the red costume with her voluptuous figure. Today Scream Queen Extraordinaire Julie Strain is the latest femme fatale to bring Vampirella to life at comic conventions worldwide and on the covers of the Vampirella comic! Talisa Soto was given the opportunity to play Vampi in a tv movie done by Roger Corman's studio. The movie didn't do to well, even with Roger Daltry, of the Who, as Vlad. Basicly it bombed big time.
Concerning her origin what is truth? How can we tell reality from falsehood?
We cannot. All we have is trust.
And for Vampirella, trust may be hard to accept because she has been told so many things about her origin that it must be a little hard to know which is really true, or whether she has heard the truth yet.
At first she believed she was an inhabitant of the planet Drakulon, a world where people lived on blood as we do on water. Drakulon orbits round twin suns, Satyr and Circe.
And it is Drakulon's sun Satyr that creates the problem, because it is a variable star that erupts at irregular intervals to scorch the surface of the planet, destroying all life. Then, as the sun wanes, so a new civilisation begins anew.
The race of which Vampirella is born, the Vampiri, are able to transform themselves into bats at will, sprout wings when required, and obviously drink what we would call blood because that is their equivalent of water.
Thus, so we are led to believe, the inhabitants of Drakulon are slowly and inevitably destroyed by Satyr's latest increase in size and strength.
As the last few lie dying a spaceship crash lands on Drakulon. It is from Earth, and Vampirella is sent to investigate. She is attacked in her bat form by the spacemen, and attacks them, discovering they carry blood in their veins. In order for her race to survive, she manages to pilot the ship back to Earth where her adventures begin.
Vampirella first begins to suspect all is not as it seems when she is given a glimpse into her future and past by the demon Nuberus (who tempts her with her true origin in order to gain access to Earth). In the vision she sees a woman faintly outlined, but cannot see who she really is. Later we discover this is an image of Lilith.
And now the story starts to blur. It appears that Vampirella's memories are all false, placed into her mind by her evil brother and sister Madek and Magdalene, on the snowy wastes of Colorado.
Put simply, Vampirella is the daughter of Lilith, born to provide redemption for her mother after she was cast out of Heaven and spawned a race of vampires. Lilith also bore two others, Madek and Magdalene, in the hopes they would give her the redemption she seeks, but they abused their power to follow the dark path.On finding her brother and sister Vampi attacks them, but they are too powerful for her.
Rather than kill her they provide her with false memories of Drakulon so that she will leave them alone to continue their quest for evil, without alerting their mother who will only then try another way to thwart them.
After her death at the hands of
Nyx Vampirella wakes to find herself in Hell, only it is a part of Hell known as Drakulon and this is the true place of her birth. She is still a child of Lilith, but instead of ridding the world of Madek and Magdalene (who are now dead anyway following the conclusion of the Mystery Walk) her mission now to provide redemption for her mother is to destroy all vampires on Earth.This she must do because Lilith's time in Hell is ending, and she can only find redemption through her daughter, Vampirella.
With the help of Adam van Helsing (also finding redemption in Drakulon) she restores the Styx, the river of blood that
provides nourishment for the inhabitants of Drakulon (which we now know to be vampires) and bids her mother farewell one last time before Lilith is taken by the Hand of God.But it isn't quite over yet. Although Vampi spends some considerable time ridding the Earth of vampires as she promised her mother, she finds herself back on Drakulon (Hell) again.
This time she is seeking the Heart of Darkness, the heart of Malkuth, one of the angels created with free will who chose evil and was killed by another of the angels, Metatron. Lilith (who it appears has not told all the truth to Vampirella) created Vampi in Malkuth's likeness yet created her as a force for good so she could release the spear holding Malkuth's heart, and thus end creation. This was Vampi's true destiny, to remove the lance, and Lilith's final vengeance on God..
This she does, and destroys creation, but then by destroying Metatron's heart immediately afterwards she creates a new beginning for life, the universe and everything.
But is this truly the end for Vampi? Has she been told the truth, or will she find some new twist to her origin? What is to befall her next?
Time alone will tell ....
back