Vampirella #6 July 1970
A young woman walks through a darkened alleyway... her voluptuous figure clad only in a tight-fitting scarlet t-shirt and short black mini-skirt would draw the attention of most men... the figure spying at her from the shadows does not appear to be a man... his face is barely human at all... "Is it possible to escape from your grave? See what happens to DARKWORTH..."
This is Ken Kelly's front cover for VAMPIRELLA #6, dated July 1970 and offering 'Illustrated tales to bewitch and bedevil you'. By presenting itself as a magazine rather than a comic, VAMPIRELLA published by Warren was able to side-step the moral guardians of the Comics Code Authority and be more overt in its content than anything being published at the time by Marvel, DC and others.
The contents page of #6 offers seven different stories, and unsurprisingly the quality varies between them. None of the stories in this issue feature the character of Vampirella herself, though she does of course act as a 'host', introducing and commenting on the tales.
The letters page gives some insight into the early readership of VAMPIRELLA. As well as the usual comments and questions about the stories and availability of the mag, there is also no shortage of letters from readers declaring their 'love' for their hostess...
"We think all our artists can draw girls. What do you think?" asks an editorial voice at the end of the letters, and the visual depiction of attractive women does seem to be very much the order of the day in VAMPIRELLA. The story THE CURSE OF CIRCE for instance features this depiction of a bacchanalian feast--
DARKWORTH! opens with a lovingly illustrated picture of its female lead Candy Church busy at work in a sleazy burlesque show--
And ONE WAY TRIP! a story which concerns itself with a man's drug-induced nightmares, also opens with a full-page celebration of the female form, this time a perky-breasted nurse whose only narrative function is to utter the line, "How is he, Doctor?"--
But lest you think VAMPIRELLA is nothing more than an excuse for its illustrators to draw lovely ladies, there are some interesting artistic flourishes. I particularly liked the way Jerry Grandenetti creates this story title from the character's hair--
Tony Williamsune's presentation of the hallucinogenic trip is impressively rendered--
I found this particular frame from the same story quite disturbing despite its relative simplicity--
And Frank Bolle's work on VICTIM OF THE VAMPYRE! is sobre and articulate, effectively invoking the atmosphere of Hammer Horror films--
Several times I was struck by how much certain pages brought to mind the work of more modern artists, as seems to be quite common in my reading of Bronze Age comics, and I wonder how much the influence is deliberate or merely unconscious... These two artists for instance prompt me to think of Dave Gibbons, first Mike Rover in DARKWORTH!--
Secondly I saw a lot of Gibbons in the tight, confident lines of Frank Bolle in THE WOLF-MAN--
I also felt that the ugly looking guys drawn by Dan Adkins in NEW GIRL IN TOWN! wouldn't look out of place in a Charles Burns story--
Overall, I felt on reading VAMPIRELLA #6 that the story-telling was very much in service to the art, as is practically acknowledged in the editorial comment, and by the fact that unusually the stories are credited with the artists' names before the writers'. There were however some nice touches in the writing, and I chuckled aloud at the way one female character dismisses another as a "bit of cheap fluff"--
With subject matter ranging from drug-taking to infidelity, and scenes such as the one shown above at a strip-show it is clear that VAMPIRELLA is being aimed at an older audience than the Horror Anthologies produced at the same time by DC or Marvel. Nicola Cuti's story THE BROTHERS DEATH even features a scene of lesbianism as depicted by artist Jack Sparling--
The images of readers' art, however, suggest that the mag was also being pored over enthusiastically by a fairly young readership--
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