Random Thoughts

Vamps: Hollywood and Vein #1-6 by Elaine Lee, William Simpson and others, published by DC/Vertigo.

This is the second Vamps mini-series, and I wrote about the previous one the other day.

(Oh, Here’s an explanation of what this blog series is.)

Let’s read the first three pages.

Oh, the art style has changed substantially since the first mini. I felt that looked very Neil Adams/Dick Giordano-derived, but this has a very different feel. I love the Muñoz-via-Giffen shadow over that guy’s face in the second panel, but that’s unfortunately the only instance of that in the book…

But most of all, the colouring doesn’t suck! It’s really good. It’s Tatjana Wood.

The faces still have a tendency to go all kinds of awry at the drop of a hat, but that’s fine.

Anyway! Lee is a playwright and an actor, and this is set in Hollywood, so we get a ton of Hollywood-related jokes, like the one about the two actors above.

With Wood’s colouring job, it’s easier to keep the characters apart, too, although when they bring in new women to be killed, it sometimes gets a bit confusing.

And, yes, the vampires are still as killingest as ever.

Lee writes an introduction to the series by explaining that she and her sister had been spending lots of time in various Hollywood offices lately, and she’d be killing of numerous people she’d met over the course of the series.

That’s nice!

The artwork is seldom grisly, but scenes like this are torture porn, anyway, aren’t they?

The Vamps are in Hollywood to make a vampire film… and when I saw this scene, I thought we were in for a super-meta commentary on the first mini-series, because this is a scene that happened there, too, but in “reality” that time.

And that was a line from that series! So I was thinking that the “fictional” movie in this series was going to be an exact retelling of the first mini-series, and I was all aboard for postmodern shenanigans, but… that’s as far as it goes, really. The guy writing the script here had a minor part in the first series, and the script touches upon what happened to him.

(Note sudden long and weird face in the right-hand panel.)

I had no idea that underwear was such a class signifier in the US!

The series has a lot of fun little scenes (like the above where the scriptwriter reminds himself to remember to put what he’s experiencing into the script)… but the series as a whole feels oddly static. The first series was a road movie: It has propulsion built-in. In this series, it feels like we’re spinning our wheels a lot of the time without getting much further.

And there’s, like, only a handful of factions plotting against each other, so it feels like a very sparsely plotted series… as Elaine Lee series go. She’s usually got tons of interesting ideas, and that makes for dense reading experience (which is both a positive and a negative). I found myself wishing there was more than just a movie being made, a guy kidnapping a Elizabethan poet vampire and keeping him in a dungeon, and that woman up there letting blood from his fans and trying to find him, and the scriptwriter coming to terms with being a half-vampire, and

OK, there’s enough stuff going on here for a number of series, but still!

There isn’t much of formal interest in the book, but you do have the occasional spread where there’s something fun going on. Here we have a mirroring of the actions of two different vampires, with I don’t want him/I want him. But it’s just aaaalmost mirrored… which moves it from OOOO to hmmm…

Lee writes presciently about Internet echo chambers and bubbles. In 1996!

Part of the feeling of spinning our wheels is that we get the backstory to basically all the characters. It’s not that those bits are boring or anything, but these bits seldom develop the plot itself…

Hm… the first series was meant to be eight issues, but was cut down. And the bits left out served as the starting point for this series. I wonder whether that’s why it feels a bit undercooked…

Huh. An ad for what became Helix, I guess? Somebody had dibs on Matrix already, I guess?

In the final issue, Lee explains that she has tons and tons of ideas for further Vamps series. We’ll see whether they turn up in the next series…

Kent Worcester writes in The Comics Journal #183, page 37:

VAMPS represents a potentially
lucrative property for Vertigo, DC, and maybe
even Time Warner. From a marketing
standpoint, it’ s a sure bet— a steamy potpourri
of blood-lust, motorcycles, scantily-clad
vampiresses, and the usual gothic bombast.
The sales for some of the other Vertigo titles
may be plummeting, but Vamps is an almost
certain winner in today’ s cut-throat marketplace.
The V amps themselves are five tough-and-
tender daughters of the night. In the first mini-
series they broke their bonds of servitude and
now, in series number two, they have arrived in
Hollywood. Perfect. As DC’s rhapsodic pro-
motional material points out, “there are lots of
Other bloodsuckers in Tinsel Town, and most Of
them aren’t even vampires!”

[…]

The “look” Of this kind of comic book is as
important as the actual story line, of course.
William Simpson’s pencils and inks seem well
suited to the material —he has a good time with
the party scenes, and Can draw a mean set of
fangs — and Tatjana Wood will undoubtedly
do a first-rate job as the book’s colorist. (I was
senttheblack-and-white
preview so can’t tell for sure.) Pete Winslade’s
painted covers, along with Vertigo’s hard-sell
marketingefforts, are also likely to help entice the
reader to pall with his or her hard-earned cash.
All ofwhich will conspireto ensure that Vamps
looks the part and finds its appropriate market
niche. But I can’t help feeling that this project is
a glossy vehicle through which DC can
help develop its latest corporate property. Imagine
the B)ssibilities —buttons, t-shirts, web sites, [X)rce-
lain statuettes, movie television rights, the whole
gamut — because DC
is already counting
the cash. •

Uhm… I don’t know whether they were thinking about Vamps buttons, really.

This series was reprinted in the recent complete Vamps collection.

Vamps #1-6 by Elaine Lee, William Simpson and others, published by DC/Vertigo.

I’m guessing this is the most commercially successful series I’m covering in this blog series — it’s got two followup mini-series and has been collected later.

(Oh, Here’s an explanation of what this blog series is.)

Let’s read the first three pages.

Hey! This is a signed copy! Look at the top of the first page. Now I feel all special…

Anyway, this seems to be a book about… vampires? I know, the title sort of gave the game away.

I can’t really say I’m finding the artwork very inspiring… it looks like Simpson is sort of going for Neal Adams, but not really… getting there? I’m also finding the colouring to be kinda annoying, for some reason: Doing stuff like the bottom right panel (with characters in a block of colour) can be a very effective tool, but here it just seems ugly and sloppy. It’s just so pedestrian.

Aaargh! I have to find a different solution to these blurriness issues: I had hoped that with the better stabilisation in the Sony camera, I could do away with extra sources of light (because that’s so boring to set up), but apparently not.

Anyway, I do think that sated, gorged vampire is funny.

And then the other vampires kill him! It’s a fun set-up: You have these five vampire women freed from their vampire master, and then he can come chase them down, too, when he comes back to life (which I assume that he will).

Writers usually go out of their way to make modern vampires either reluctant to kill innocent people (so they only choose bad people to kill), or make them all tortured about it. Lee will have none of that: These vampires kill random people in gruesome ways, and they have great fun while doing it.

So what do we have here? Just pure nihilism? If your protagonists are just evil monsters that you’d rather see die on the next page, it can get difficult to keep the audience interested…

So Lee writes a very defensive introduction. Her defence seems to be “it’s only entertainment, dude”, as if that … makes much sense.

Again, I’m finding this colouring strategy pretty off-putting and confusing, and I’m just generally having a problem keeping the characters apart. I can tell the one brown-haired from the other because she says “mommi” in every speech balloon (thanks!), and she has slightly rattier hair, but that’s it. Their names don’t help, either. I think it’s… Whitesnake, Howler, Screech, Slater, Mr. Belding, Skeeter, Mink and Zack. Those are very confusing names.

(I may be misremembering some of those names.)

But one thing I do like about that page above there, is the way Lee perfectly describes the drunken/stoned state of these vampires (a major plot point is that vampires get really high from drinking blood).

And then they swear to never, ever kill any bikers (or mechanics) again! Just when you thought they had no sense.

“Mommi”? Is suddenly the other brown-haired one (Screech? Howler?) saying “mommi”? (I can tell it’s the other because she has an ear ring.) Or perhaps the letterer just got as confused as I am as to which one is which and pointed that speech balloon at the wrong person…

This page amused me greatly. Lee has a background in science fiction, and this sort of logical exploration of what it means to be a vampire is very sf.

That must be one of those southern sayings: “A man is like a cabbage with a handle. When you need one, just grab that handle and pull.” I’m going to put that into all git commit messages from now on, because of course I totally understand what it means. (Please leave notes in the comments section.)

The prize for Least Insightful Letter goes to this one, I think. I’m not sure there is any logic there…

For a six-issue mini-series, we do go over the same plot points more than you’d expect. It’s like a mini-recap here and there, which is something most comics had stopped doing, since everything was going to end up as trade paperbacks, anyway…

But, to recap, the main plot of the series is that this vampire (Zack, I think), had a baby before she became a vampire, and the series is really a road movie to go and fetch the child. There’s complications with a sister and a… detective?… and it does really help with keeping things rolling. It’s a well-constructed series, really.

The artwork… not so much? Look at that second figure in the first panel (well, it’s the same character, but) that looks very odd and short indeed. I think the artist is going for a foreshortened downwards view, but it doesn’t really work at all… and the Batman-era Dick Giordano vampire is pretty out of keeping with the rendering of the other vampires… and it’s… I mean, it’s not a horrible page or anything, but it’s just boring.

A letter writer opines that killing so many men is a turn-off (for male audiences). *rolls eyes*

Oh, and the cabbage? Now I feel like a copy-cat, but I really didn’t understand that er southern saying. Is it a double entendre? Is the handle the penis? Why would you need the cabbage anyway?

Anyway, I think this is the most straightforwardly successful Lee comic I’ve read: It’s a snappy read and it’s quite entertaining, and I’m not surprised that it’s apparently a commercial success as well.

It’s no masterpiece like Starstruck, though.

A collected edition of this series has been published:

william simpson is one of the best comic book artists today. lots of detail, great action and character. elaine lee is one of the best comic authors today.

And:

This book, which collects the complete 6-part miniseries, is not really a big and well-built tale storywise but it IS a fun, uncomplicated road trip which has it’s own take on the habits and what can and can’t hurt a vampire. And unlike most of the titles in this particular genre it’s NOT a T & A story.

A complete edition of all the mini-series has also been published.

Saint Sinner #1-7 by Elaine Lee, Max Douglas, Larry Brown and others, published by Marvel Comics.

This book is part of Marvel’s Razorline — basically super-hero concepts from Clive Barker expanded into a line of four continuing series. I approached this series with a bit of trepidation after having read far too many Barker-based comics while doing the Epic Comics blog. They were all pretty… awful? Yeah. Pretty awful.

(Oh, Here’s an explanation of what this blog series is.)

This series is from 1993, so the first issue has to have some sort of gimmick. This one has an embossed cardboard cover and metallic inks. It’s hard to say from the snap up there, but it’s really elaborate: It looks like they’ve used many different metallic inks, but that may be due to how it’s printed and patterned… It’s the most interesting use of metallic inks and embossing I can remember seeing from this era. (I mean, I haven’t seen that many — just the ones Epic Comics were doing for its Hard Hitters launches, and they basically looked like “they told us to use metallic inks somewhere, so I put a splotch down there. Done.”

Anyway, let’s read the first three pages…

Well, the first page said to listen to N.W.O. from the Ministry album, so I put the album on. I’m very suggestible.

So… the concept is basically that we have a protagonist that’s possessed by a demon, and among many other people he kills while possessed is the woman above, who turns out to be an angel. Who then possessed him, too. Which means that you have three personalities in one body. And he has super-powers (he can age/evolve/de-age things.)

That’s not really a bad concept, as supernatural super-hero concepts go?

So we get these different voices using different lettering (poor Janice Chiang) yapping at each other incessantly. There’s… a lot of dialogue. Trialogue? That’s a word now.

The book is just plain abstruse. Above you apparently have some inter-dimensional hi-jinx where… one of them dies? If you’re able to tell that from the artwork, you’re better at interpreting lines than I am.

OH DEER. We get a previous from one of the other Razorline books, Hyperkind. I’m glad I’m not reading that one — it looks like a migraine put down on paper.

With the second issue, the artwork becomes a bit more easy to read, at least.

And there’s interesting effects like that blurry guy. He’s blurry because he can go between er dimensions and stuff, you see.

Ah, I see: There’s a consulting editor, Michael Smith, involved with this line of comics. He’s overseeing this from the Clive Barker side, if I interpret this correctly…

The angel tries explaining things to the human on terms the human can understand: By giving a Three’s Company analogue.

And then a film noir thing.

At this point in the series, I’m kinda intrigued. There’s just so much going on, and while I’m pretty sure that none of it is actually going anywhere, I’m hoping that Lee will be doing something interesting here other than just adding more and more stuff. It’s a very dense read.

Oooh! An ad with artwork by Gary Baseman. Stylish.

The editor explains that the first issue shipped late… because of problems with the cover on the first issue, which was very complicated to make. So I guess I was right to be impressed.

Marvel would go bankrupt a couple of years after this, but before that happened, they reduced the staff significantly. I seem to remember somebody writing that they had 30 editors on staff, and they fired all but six.

And looking at these lists of editors in every issue, you have to wonder whether they perhaps had a… few too many editors at the time? I guess Potts and DeFalco didn’t actually work on this book, but the other three sounds like they were involved.

The “being dense” thing… Here’s a typical example: Our protagonist (with three people in his head (the normal thought balloons, the wacky letters captions (the demon), and the light-blue script-ey captions (the angel))), and then the wavey captions (those are prayers), and then the captions with yellow background (the thoughts from the tree (!) that the protagonist is evolving and growing and accidentally gives a real brain)…

And we haven’t heard or seen from the tree before this page, and we’ll not hear or see it again after this page.

It’s a lot. It’s a lot for one single page. There’s a lot of these pages.

Is it too much? It’s exhausting, anyway.

And then… we get a crossover with Ectokid, and this issue continues the storyline from an issue there instead of the previous issue of this series. So the normal Marvel shenanigans.

The artwork continues to change and becomes more legible. Probably because Richard Pace takes over the pencils.

We get an example of what Barker actually contributed to these series. It doesn’t really seem like it was extensive.

Lee explains a bit about why she’s doing this series.

And then…

We get a new art team! The editor explained (in the previous issue) that the penciller had just submitted something to Marvel, and he’d snapped him up.

It’s pretty wild… everybody looks like they… have leprosy? I love it.

It’s unhinged. Probably the weirdest artwork Marvel had published?

I mean, look at it. LOOK AT IT! It’s wonderful. Look at that pose the running cop has.

And while it’s expressionistic, the storytelling is a lot clearer than with the previous team. I wonder whether Larry Brown went on to do something else; I want to see where he’s going with this style.

And they’re selling subscriptions to the book, even if it’s going to be cancelled the next issue (which, surely, they had to know when the next-to-last issue went to press).

The final two issues (a two-parter) is all about living and not wanting to or not, and our protagonist substitutes a dying baby with a living one… and… stuff… it’s pretty weird.

Yeah, exactly.

And then it’s over. The end. Absolutely none of the plot strands that had been building were resolved.

But that’s a nice final page.

The editor explains that the series is cancelled for low sales, and the reason was the current glut of comics. (Which was the result of Image Comics shenanigans, and Marvel responding by launching dozens and dozens of new series.) By the end, thousands of US comics shops would close their doors.

It sounds like the other Razorline series would continue, but they were all cancelled a couple of months later.

And there was a Saint Sinner coda?

The final Razorline release was the one-shot Ektokid Unleashed (Oct. 1994), written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, with artwork by penciler Hector Gomez and inker John Strangeland. It included a prose short story by Elaine Lee about another Razorline character, Saint Sinner.

This series has never been reprinted or collected, and it would be a hard sell, as it just… stops.

There’s a series of Youtube reviews of this series. It’s really, really boring — it’s a guy recounting the plot of the issue, and if there’s one thing I hate more than retelling a plot, it’s listening to somebody retelling a plot.

I tried googling Larry Brown, but I was unable to find anything about him, or whether he continued working in comics, or dropped out after these two impressive issues.