Aliens/Vamirella (2016) - A Surprisingly Good Read

This review contains minor spoilers. 

I know, I know. Vampirella. She’s most famous for her skimpy outfit (even by comic book standards). She’s a walking male gaze with fangs.

So, why did I read this comic? Two reasons:

1 - It was free through ComicBookPlus via my local library and I’m on an Aliens crossover comic kick.

2 - in a review covering this comic, YouTuber Alpha Rookie noted she doesn’t really wear her iconic costume in this crossover and is, instead, dressed in a more practical purple parka. I am deeply indebted to this review and echo two of his insights below. 

Aliens/Vampirella is a 6-issue miniseries originally published by Dynamite Entertainment and Dark Horse Comics from September 2015 to February 2016. It is written by Corinna Bechko with pencils and inks by Javier García-Miranda, colors by InLight Studio, and lettering by Simon Bowland. I read the collected trade on ComicBookPlus through my local library. 

When a Mars colony discoverers slumbering ancient vampire ruins beneath the surface of the red planet, sexy space vampire Vampirella is called in as a consultant. However, vampires aren’t the only thing slumbering beneath the Martian soil…

I knew what I was going into thanks to the aforementioned review, but this comic still pleasantly surprised me. I’m trying not to retread too much of the same territory Alpha Rookie covered, but he had two insights worth calling out: this is a really well thought out crossover between traditional vampire lore and the Alien franchise. This comic has lore! It kept me hooked.

Aliens/Vampirella #1 interior by Javier García-Miranda

The setting of the ancient vampire ruins are a really interesting place to explore and I found myself as interested by the vampire mythos as the alien story. There are some wonderful twists and turns that cleverly contrast Vampirella’s compassion for humanity with the way ancient vampires viewed humans as cattle. 

Our heroes activities reawaken an ancient sleeping vampire. While she is no friend to humanity, she’s also not evil. She’s essentially a rancher. She describes how the early vampire colonists had to find water to encourage their cattle to mate to produce more food. Her clinical, detached agricultural language is genuinely terrifying. It would be easy to use this vampire as another antagonist, but she instead serves as a foil for Vampirella and reads as a person out of time with horribly outdated perspectives. It’s really competent writing.

Alpha Rookie’s other valuable insight is that Vampirella really is one of the best parts of this comic. She’s compassionate, quick thinking, and clever. A memorable scene that Alpha Rookie mentioned and got me to read this comic is that at one point, she has to drink from the sole surviving human in the room to recover her strength. Instead of just drinking him, she spends two pages convincing him it’s the only way. It’s a really nice sequence. Vampirella is a protagonist I really grew to like.

Aliens/Vampirella #2 cover by Gabriel Hardman

It’s not a perfect comic. The human characters in charge are infuriatingly incompetent for much of it. There is also one death that felt mostly for shock value and the ending is abrupt. Overall, I really enjoyed this crossover!

I tried following this up with more Vampirella comics but, at least for now, couldn’t get into it. I do realize Vampirella’s costume is her appeal, but I wish there were more comics like this where the male gaze is turned down a few notches and the world-building takes center stage. If that were the case, I’d read more.

Also, go watch Alpha Rookie’s video which covers a number of Alien/Predator comic book crossovers.

4/5 Stars

Aliens/Vampirella #5 cover by Gabriel Hardman