Only two years ago the #1 top selling issue of Vampirella arrived at comic book stores to celebrate the character’s 50th anniversary (with sales surpassing 130,000 copies). This week the seventh Dynamite-era Vampirella-centric comic book series begins as multiple incarnations of Vampirella arise in the all-new Vampiverse. Publisher Dynamite again has pulled out all the stops for the character, scheduling several cover variants by a variety of creators.
Check out a preview below of the first issue and several covers from the first three issues of Vampiverse.
Today at Elite Comics and your local comic book shop–Free Comic Book Day is returning for 2021. Often overlapping with the annual Star Wars Day–May the Fourth–this year it was pushed out a few months to Saturday, August 14. A good excuse to visit your local comic book shop and get re-introduced to some series you may have missed, the annual FCBD is also a way to check out some titles you may otherwise have overlooked. Below, check out some of the covers and titles coming your way for FCBD 2021 today!
In last year’s superhero/horror mash-up DIE!Namite, Dynamite Entertainment took its Masks team-up in a weird new direction. Masks featured the comic book publishers’ classic superhero characters working together with some of pulp comics’ best villains. Last year’s intro series DIE!Namite found Red Sonja colliding with a 100-year-old John Carter of Mars, Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, a space-voyaging Vampirella, and Marla Drake aka Miss Fury (flashing ahead fifty years and in her eighties)–still fighting crime and taking names. This year get ready for DIE!Namite Lives!, a sequel monthly series featuring Evil Dead’s Bruce Campbell hero Ash Williams joining up with Old Miss Fury (think Old Man Logan), Peri-Purr the Sixth (a cat who thinks Miss Fury is her sidekick), a bald-is-beautiful Vampirella, the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet aka Pantha, and a few other surprises.
And they’re all surrounded by the Undead. Deadites. Zombies. Drakulon has fallen to the undead plague. What’s a warehouse inventory worker like Ash going to do about it?
A long time from now in a galaxy far, far away–actually at your local comic book shop–Free Comic Book Day is returning for 2021. Often overlapping with the annual Star Wars Day–May the Fourth–this year it’s being pushed out a few months to Saturday, August 14. A good excuse to visit your local comic book shop and get re-introduced to some series you may have missed, the annual FCBD is also a way to check out some titles you may otherwise have overlooked. This week comic book retailers revealed the results of the FCBD committee’s selections for this year’s freebies. What made the cut? It seems plenty early, but now you have no excuse to know what you want when you get to the front of the line. Below, check out some of the covers and titles coming your way for FCBD 2021 this August!
The #1 top selling issue of Vampirella is arriving in comic book stores this month. It’s part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the popular horror character, and already pre-orders for #1 of a new series have surpassed 130,000 copies. This makes the forthcoming first issue of the series, the fifth solo-titled Vampirella comic series, the biggest selling Vampirellaissue ever, even beating sales numbers for the original classic magazine from decades ago. Publisher Dynamite has pulled out all the stops, scheduled to release several variant covers from familiar artists for the first issue. Pre-sales numbers also make this Dynamite’s all-time best selling issue.
Several creators had a hand in developing Vampirella back in 1969, from monster guru Forrest J. Ackerman to artists Trina Robbins, Tom Sutton, and Frank Frazetta, and editor Archie Goodwin. The new series will be written by Christopher Priest, with interior artwork by Ergün Gündüz. Frank Cho is providing the main cover, with variants available from Alex Ross, Joe Jusko, Adam Hughes, Ed Sanjulian, Guillem March, Jose Gonzalez, and J. Scott Campbell and Frank Frazetta “icon” covers, a wraparound Frank Cho cover, plus cosplay editions for each issue and a blank sketch cover, and limited no-logo and black and white cover editions. Stanley “Artgerm” Lau will provide the main cover for Issue #2, J. Scott Campbell for Issue #3, and it seems there’s a hint from the publisher of a possible new Frank Frazetta cover coming, too. If you’re lucky enough, you already picked up the 50th anniversary Free Comic Book Day issue we previewed here at borg back in May.
Gündüz′s use of color is probably the best contribution of the first issue, especially in his splash pages. Fans of the character and monster-zines will find the story is filled with the body count, blood, and horror they’d expect in a Vampirellabook.
Take a look at these variant covers for the first two issues, and keep a look out for the life-sized Vampirelladisplay by Jose Gonzalez:
New Army of Darkness! Vampirella! Red Sonja! Bettie Page! All four feature a Halloween theme plus there’s even more Vampirella and Red Sonja, a new Mars Attacks book, a new KISS book, and a James Bond hardcover. If you’re prepping for Halloween weekend, you have plenty of books to get your Halloween spirit engaged, and cosplayers could get their next year of ideas from a single new comic book day tomorrow as Dynamite Comics delivers a great selection of new books to Elite Comics and your local comic book store. We have previews for ten books below courtesy of Dynamite, and a big pile of variant cover previews.
In addition to Dynamite rolling out four one-shot stories for Halloween, James Bond: The Body is out tomorrow in its first collected edition. Bryan Hill and Rodney Buchemi begin a new series featuring your favorite costumed band with KISS: Blood and Stardust (with 12 cover variants available). A new Mars Attacks series begins, with ten variant covers. The second collected edition of Legenderry Red Sonja arrives, plus two new Vampirella issues: Vampirella: Roses for the Dead (with a Billy Tucci cover available) and the Vampirella/Dejah Thoriscrossover.
As part of its volley of news items for San Diego Comic-Con this week, Dynamite Entertainment previewed five covers for titles it will feature with 40-page stories for this Halloween. You’ll want to add one or more of these titles to your pull list for your local comic book store’s annual Halloween Comic Fest bash (Note: “bash” usually is accompanied by cake). Look for special Halloween issues for Army of Darkness, the new Elvira, Mistress of the Dark title, Bettie Page, Red Sonja, and Vampirella.
In Army of Darkness, Ash finally meets ghost pirates. Written by Chad Bowers, Chris Sims, and Benito Cereno, with artwork by Eoin Marron and Anthony Marques, you’ll find a chainsaw battle against cutlasses and muskets. In the pages of Bettie Page a Boston artist is in contact with godlike space invaders, written by David Avallone and Leah Williams with artwork by Julius Ohta and Fernando Ruiz.
In Elvira’s Halloween special, the mistress of the dark hosts a horror film festival and learns a creator of a famous zombie flick is more than she bargained for–written by Dan Parent, Fernando Ruiz, and Scott Bryan Wilson, with artwork by Dan Parent and Fernando Ruiz. Readers of Vampirella will see their heroine celebrate her birthday, complete with a demonic invasion, Scott Lobdell and Blake Northcott are writing this story with artwork by Rapha Lobosco and Anthony Marques.
Tomorrow is Wednesday, and that means a new volley of comic books is coming to your local comic book store. Today we have previews of several new issues. From IDW Publishing we have Star Trek: Manifest Destiny, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Bebop & Rock Steady, Popeye Classics and Donald Duck. From Dynamite Comics we have Xena: Warrior Princess, Vampirella, and Gold Key Alliance. From BOOM! Studios we have Adventure Time, Big Trouble in Little China, and Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy.
So wait no further–check out more than 65 pages of previews of the next issues of all of these titles after the break:
The Renaissance of movie and TV tie-in action figures arrived in 2013 with Funko’s classic Kenner-style ReAction figure line. Other companies focus on single licensed figures and getting the likenesses spot-on, but Funko’s diversification of lines meant everyone could find something that fit their personal niche at an affordable price point. A true throwback series, one of the overlooked features of the line is the incredible variety of no-names-taken, classic kick-ass heroines represented.
In fact you can find here the top of the world’s best, in-your-face, take-no-prisoners, genre heroines. Buy them for yourself, for your friends, or get your favorite as a totem to inspire you each day from your desktop. And where the early sculpts in Funko’s line admittedly looked nothing like the actresses that made the roles famous, the new lines have only improved. And nobody has better packaging designs than the ReAction line.
Who would you add to the Funko roster of heroines? Compare your list to our more than 85 suggestions for future kick-ass women action figures below.
First, check out this Baker’s Dozen of our favorites in the current Funko pantheon:
Nothing in the past five years has been more fun as far as comic book events are concerned than Dynamite Comics’ ever-growing crossovers incorporating their huge roster of licensed characters. The New 52 and Convergence events from DC Comics and the Secret Wars event from Marvel Comics are so much more of the same–pulling in dozens of titles and character crossovers over the course of several months. All of these publisher events attempt to reinvigorate their brands–to bring more people in to try out the regular monthly series featuring their stock of characters, whether you’re looking at the Avengers or the X-Men or the Justice League. Dynamite’s events also pull from their stock of characters, yet the publisher has managed to unleash something very new in the way these characters come together.
Dynamite’s Masks limited series introduced a pantheon of superheroes from the literary past: Green Hornet and Kato, The Shadow, Miss Fury, Spider, The Lone Ranger, Zorro, the Green Lama, Black Terror and The Black Bat (a second limited monthly follow-on series, Masks 2, is underway now). Then Bill Willingham expanded and amped up the Dynamite characters with his Legenderry steampunk adventures. Another limited series, this one introduced the Six Thousand Dollar Man, teaming up with a parallel world, steampunk era Red Sonja, Zorro, Flash Gordon, Green Hornet, the Phantom, and more. It now has its own expanded event series of sorts with Legenderry universe monthly series featuring each of Vampirella, Red Sonja, and Green Hornet.
But Dynamite’s best crossover event series may have just arrived with writer Gail Simone and artist Sergio Davila’s new Swords of Sorrow. A dark prince has enlisted an arsenal of women warriors to defend his interests, including the well-known red, horned villainess Purgatori. But a mysterious and beautiful otherworld woman called the Traveller has assigned various swords to her own select group of women warriors via the Courier, across time and space–from Everywhere and Everywhen to Nowhen–to defend worlds menaced by this prince. Her heroines include Red Sonja, Vampirella, Irene Adler, Dejah Thoris, Jennifer Blood, Jane Porter, Lady Zorro, Milan Kato, Masquerade, Black Sparrow, Miss Fury, Pantha, Lady Rawhide, and Jana the Jungle Girl.
Leading a select team of women writers in nine Swords of Sorrow tie-in series and one-shots, Gail Simone has her challenges here, required to pull together more than a dozen main characters quickly, explaining enough to let us know who they are for those unfamiliar with them all, and set up enough world-building to let us understand how they all fit together. This may be the best we’ve read of any series from Simone so far, as Issue #1 of the six backbone issues gives us all we need to get excited to see what comes next. Sergio Davila’s artwork is as detailed and interesting as his work on Legenderry, sure to keep us interested to come back for more each month. Check out the full checklist of the crossover series below.
