Broken Frontier

Vampirella prepares to fight against Dracula while readers prepare to fight boredom.

To start things off correctly, it's best to read the second story in the issue before the first. The mysterious and foreboding tale of the Draaagunsun in the main story, possibly Dracula, is a confusing tale of rebirth and returns. Once the precursor tale - a reprint of The New European story by Alan Moore and Gary Frank from Vampirella/Dracula: The Centennial a decade and a half ago - is read, things start to become coherenent. But not too much...

For a story titled Vampirella VS. Dracula, there's little (if any, given the twists the book could give) interaction between the two characters, and they definitely don't fight. Only in the Moore/Frank reprint do we get a solidified intro to Dracula, and that story lacks Vampirella completely.

The Moore/Frank story is pretty enjoyable; it's clear and consistent, and seeing some work of these two greats in their own right together is a surprisingly nice reprint. The Harris/Rodriguez story is less good: it's a mess of confusing plots, pacing and time shifts, and a large disappointment in that Vampirella is not presented as, well, a sexy vampire, something that defines the character.

It's the early stages, but a few missteps at this point don't exactly encourage the reader to cough up another $4 for the next installment.