First published: 2020
The Blurb: She came from a dying world in search of adventure, love…and blood!
The year was 1969. Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. Over 300,000 music lovers flooded into a farm outside Woodstock, NY for the ultimate concert. The Beatles recorded their final album.
And crashing to Earth aboard a damaged spacecraft was a refugee from Drakulon, whose inhabitants had drunk from rivers of blood―until they ultimately ran dry. A lone survivor of a dead planet who discovered that the sustenance she needed in order to live flowed not in rivers but in the veins of the humans of this strange new world.
A huntress named…Vampirella!
In From the Stars…a Vampiress, author Steven A. Roman examines the history of the queen of the bad girls whose reign has lasted through five decades of published comic books, novels, and magazines, and turns a critical eye toward her sole motion picture appearance—as well as the 1970s movie version that might have been. Combined with an extensive checklist of her Warren Era appearances and a foreword by Sean Fernald, the Official Vampirella Historian, From the Stars is a smorgasblood of information for Vampirella fans!
The review: I have to admit that I am nowhere near as knowledgeable about Vampirella as I should be – or at least I wasn’t until I read this volume.
This is an unauthorised, but very detailed, guide to the classic Vampirella adventures. The book looks at her inception and creation, offers an episode guide of all her adventures within the Warren Publishing oeuvre (and a checklist of the same) concentrating on her stories and not when she served as horror host for other stories. There is also a lengthy section on the attempts to bring the alien vampiress to the screen – which culminated in the risible Vampirella.
Author Steven A Roman clearly has a love for the subject and his writing is conversational in tone, with a bounce to it that makes it very readable. However, the fact that this is a reference book is not forgotten and there are citations and an index.
Readers should be aware that, whilst the volume is illustrated, there are no illustrations accompanying the episode guide as this is an unauthorised volume – a fact that the author is upfront about in the introduction. This is specifically mentioned as, whilst it is perhaps not normally an issue, it is something that might be in a reader's expectation for a guide to a comic series. This is an excellent volume for the Vampirella connoisseur and an education for folks like me, who didn’t know too much and who want to learn. Available digitally and in print from Starwarp Concepts. 8 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
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