In 2010, Dynamite Entertainment reintroduced readers to Vampirella, the most iconic heroine in the history of horror comics! Now, for the first time ever, the raven-haired monster hunter's one-woman war on evil is collected in a massive Omnibus edition, an epic compendium of mystery, mayhem, and the macabre! In hot pursuit of the infamous Vlad Dracula, Vampirella discovers a far-reaching conspiracy far deadlier than the Lord of the Undead himself. Thrill to the action and intrigue with three complete storylines: "Crown of Worms", "A Murder of Crows", and "Throne of Skulls", comprising issues #1-20 of the ongoing Dynamite comic book series, plus bonus stories originally presented in the first two Vampirella Annuals.
Eric Trautmann is a comic book writer, editor, and graphic designer also know as Eric S. Trautmann.
For several years, Eric was a writer and editor for West End Games' acclaimed Star Wars roleplaying game line. After leaving dice-and-paper gaming behind, Eric then moved into videogames, an early recruit into Microsoft Game Studios' nascent entertainment licensing apparatus.
While at Microsoft, Eric wrote and edited in-game dialogue, story bibles, marketing materials, and original fictional content for the web.
Among the titles that Eric helped develop were the smash-hit HALO: Combat Evolved (including editing chores on the first three HALO novels for Ballantine / Del Rey, as well as writing The Art of HALO, also for Del Rey); Crimson Skies (creating a strongly immersive in-universe website for the pulpy, two-fisted adventure setting; editing weekly serialized online pulp novellas; and editing and contributing to Del Rey's mass-market paperback fiction anthology based on the setting); MechWarrior 4; and Perfect Dark Zero, acting as a story consultant to the property and helping to develop a fiction publishing program in support of the game.
In addition, Eric has consulted on videogame properties for EPIC (drafting a story bible for the Gears of War franchise), story development for Radical Entertainment, and delivering talks on the craft of writing in games to various publishers (notably, Blizzard Entertainment).
After leaving Microsoft, Eric wrote a six-issue miniseries for Perfect Dark (titled Perfect Dark: Janus' Tears), published by Prima Games, as well as editing and lettering an original graphic novel prequel to the hyperviolent videogame Army of Two, titled Army of Two: Dirty Money (written by John Ney Rieber and illustrated by Brandon McKinney).
While developing Perfect Dark Zero's novel program, he edited Perfect Dark: Initial Vector and Perfect Dark: Second Front, scribed by Greg Rucka (and published by TOR). The collaboration proved fruitful, and Eric was later invited to write a fill-in issue of Greg's DC Comics superhero/espionage title, Checkmate (which led to a half-year stint as co-writer on the title, ending his run with issue #25).
Checkmate led to several other DC Comics projects (as both writer or co-writer), including Final Crisis: Resist, JSA Vs. Kobra: Engines of Faith, The Shield, Mighty Crusaders, Adventure Comics and others.
Eric currently writes the continuing adventures of classic sword-and-sorcery heroine, Red Sonja, for Dynamite Entertainment.
In November 2010, Eric's debut issue of a revitalized Vampirella (also published by Dynamite Entertainment) was released to widespread critical praise and excellent sales (Vampirella #1 was the best selling non-premier publisher title for Diamond Comics Distribution in the month of its release).
In addition to writing comics, Eric is a graphic designer and marketing consultant, through his Fedora Monkey Studio, which offers (among other services) logo and branding design, intellectual property development, and viral marketing (such as the infamous "Montoya Journal" to promote the DC Comics' series The Question: The Five Books of Blood).
Eric splits his time between Raymond, Wa (where he resides) and Lacey, WA (where his wife runs the best comic shop ever).
This is one of those little gems I just happened to stumble across on Hoopla. And I'm using the term gem loosely here, but it was honestly a lot better than I was expecting. I assumed it would be something along the lines of updated schlocky vampire porn starring an Elviraesque heroine who kicks ass in a ridiculously skimpy outfit. And that's pretty much what it this is, but for some reason, I sorta liked it anyway.
I gotta admit I was lulled into a false sense of security by the first few issues. Vampirella trots around beating the shit out of evil vampires in pretty functional (but cool looking!) clothes, so I figured that the cover for this was just paying homage to her previous incarnations.
Bzzzt! Wrong! By the end of her first story arc, she had donned some sort of red bandage strips that mostly covered her nipples and muff - because she'd been possessed by an evil tentacle monsterish god, and we all know that immediately translates into the girl slipping into a thong.
After overcoming the knockoff Chuthulu, and recovering from her injuries (thanks to a trusty new human sidekick), Vampirella puts her jeans back on and takes off to parts unknown for new adventures. Once again, it appeared to me that she was going to dress like a normal person and the g-string was simply a nod to her older comics. And, once again, I was wrong.
By the halfway point, it became clear that every time she fought a monster she was going to somehow magically morph into the fanboy outfit. In fact, by the last story arc, they completely dropped all pretense that she wore anything that remotely resembled human clothes and she just rocked those skanky red ribbons like a boss!
And you know what? Fuck it. Because evidently, that's the outfit she's known for, so why not? Hell, if I had her supernatural tits, I'd wear the shit out of something like that! Just, you know, prancing around my living room, skipping through Walmart, and making especially dramatic entrances to the parent-teacher conferences. The only downside I can see is that you'd really have to keep your clam waxed on the regular because any sort of errant pubes would be hyper-noticeable with those sort of bloomers.
Now, those of you who are like me and know relatively nothing about Vampirella? Well, this isn't exactly an enlightening title. BUT. It was intriguing in its own way, and I'm seriously curious about this character now. There seems to have been several different versions of her over the years, and I'm honestly thinking that I might really want to check out some of her earlier runs. I know! I don't get it, either! But there's just something about Vampirella...
The storyline could have been better, it was interesting but they could have expanded on it and gave more details.
It felt rushed, like it went straight into the violence/vampire hunting too quickly and I'd have preferred it to have started off slower and built up into it; I'd also like to point out that there was too many plot holes.
BUT..
There's more to the story, this omnibus collects issues #1-20 and clocks in at 536 pages; there's another three more of these omnibus collections.
What’s it about? There’s this anti-hero who calls herself Vampirella! She protects humans from evil vampires as well as demons and other weird supernatural s***. These are some of her more recent adventures!
Why it gets 5 stars: The story is interesting, there is much more to it and it is pretty interesting as well as weird. The art is extremely well done! There are some amazing panels throughout this book. The characters are pretty interesting and well written. This story is full of well done horror stuff that focuses mainly on monsters and creepiness, there’s also lots of vampire gore. The action scenes are amazing! Very well drawn with lots of awesome panels, excitement and some pretty gruesome kills for all the fans of that kinda thing reading this comic! This story has lots of twists, that was a pleasant surprise! There’s some pretty good humor in here! I especially like Vampi’s snarkiness (sorry V, I just love that nickname, you really should go with it, has a nice ring to it). The overall craziness of this book is just awesome!
Overall: I’d recommend this one. Is this going to be an emotional book with a huge in depth story that will change your life? No. Is it fun and sure to please fans of exciting comics? Hell yeah!
I’m not sure what to make of this. I was very cynical about this as I started reading it given the outrageous design of her clothes and feeling of almost exploitation as I read it but I have to be honest and say I was won over in the end. The design is very in your face but the comic is a propoer horror comic and there was value for money in this collected edition. 600 pages is ahefty read and a lot happens within the tome.
The story sticks to the plot. I liked that. The horror is properly horrible and the fact that she is a monster is not shied away from. There were some wonderfully grim scenes and moments in the story and some real nastiness. The news was not always good in the tale and I left it wanting to know more.
The writing was solid, the stories fun and the art sublime at times. This had high production values.
Honesty people, you could give her some clothes to wear and this would be just as good. But despite my reservations this was a solid piece of work with both horror and humour. I enjoyed it.
I'm a big Vampi fan from my younger days, but when I took a long hiatus from reading comics I totally lost track of the character. This particular Omnibus filled in a lot of gaps that I had. Pretty good art, and a fairly interesting story line, Vampi is set up for many story arcs to come in this collection. That being said, Vampirella isn't exactly must read material. It's a pretty good take on vampires, but if you're tired of blood suckers, this just won't be for you. Grab it if you're a fan or if it is on sale.
A good Vampirella story for the modern age. It’s got a lot of action, good (not great) art and is consistently entertaining. My main gripe is that the side characters, which are usually a revolving door of characters in Vampi comics, aren’t particularly memorable this time around. Only other thing is that the thought-bubbles are a little too frequent and slow things down too much in fight sequences.
A worthy collection to get me into some Vampirella. Found the text a bit off putting at times as the text boxes and the speech seemed to chop each other up panel by panel which stuttered the story too much, but over all this was interesting. Thirsty for more.
I DNF'd the annual bonus stories. I just did not care at all about them. But the main storyline of the series I did really like and I will be continuing at some point.