Vampirella



Vampirella was created in 1969 by Forrest J. Ackerman for Warren Publishing's black and white horror anthology magazine of the same name.

In her first tale, Vampirella was an inhabitant of the planet Drakulon, which had blood instead of water, which gave rise to a race of Vampiric Human Aliens. After arriving on Earth, Vampi devoted herself to fighting evil of all kinds, as well as falling in love with one Adam Van Helsing.

The series was revived in The Nineties by Harris Publications.

Now her adventures are published by Dynamite Entertainment.

Vampirella herself is an example of:

 * Action Girl / Dark Action Girl
 * Dark Is Not Evil: Vampi may give off the vibe of a sexy, evil creature, but she only saves her rage for the bad guys.
 * Failure Hero: In her original magazine, Vampirella rarely saved the day. Often she was incapacitated until the end of the issue, only being revived to kill the bad guy. Most of her stories ether featured, the problem resolving itself, a secondary character doing the majority of the work, and in some cases Vampirella was even the problem herself. This is not the case for the later series, where she takes a dominate role.
 * Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Vampirella is probably one of the earliest examples of a vampire protagonist, created well over twenty years before they became more common.
 * Meaningful Name: Obvious. Nah, not really! Also used in-story: In the Warren classic "Deaths Dark Angel", villain W.W.Wade composed a classical Xanatos selfmate when he supposed Vampirellas bite would make him immortal. It didn't.
 * Ladyella
 * Lady in Red
 * Most Common Superpower
 * Stripperific: Her signature red outfit, complete with Absolute Cleavage.
 * Vampires Are Sex Gods
 * Weirdness Censor: Very few people seem to notice or remark on her omnipresent red outfit, and when they do it's quickly handwaved.
 * Back From the Dead: Completely absent in the Warren times. Often enough in the Harris run (up to the point that the last time the creators killed her, afterwards they didn't even bother to properly revive her). Dynamite yet had no opinion on the matter.

The comic contains:

 * Continuity Snarl: Three different comic companies didn't make it better. If you haven't noticed yet, you probably were too busy staring at her costume :-)
 * In the Warren years, the origin was that she was from another planet, Drakulon. In the Harris years this was changed to her being the daughter of Lilith but there were multiple variations even during that one company which varied on such facts as whether Lilith repented, what her reason was for raising Vampirella as good assuming she didn't repent, whether Lilith was in the Garden of Eden or in Hell, and some minor details such as where Vampirella's costume comes from.
 * A Worldwide Punomenon: Big time in the early issues, much less later.
 * No Periods, Period: Played strictly for the lulz (Vampirella of all would know, and Pantha is a werefeline, so Vampirella can't mean it seriously) in the issue with the Russ Meyer hommage "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (yes, the title is identical) where Vampirella remarks to a raging Pantha "It's that time of the month, right?"