Vampirella Flip Book

“Bugs” – October 1994

Vampirella’s costume is designed with one thing in mind: sex appeal. It does its job well and has helped the character endure for 40 years and even helped thrust (no pun intended) her prominently (no pun intended) into the forefront of the nineties bad girl craze. What amuses me the most about her costume, though, is how well it acts as a barometer for the sort of story you’re about to get: the skimpier the costume, the less the creators care about story and the more they care about boobies. Take this issue’s cover by Jim Balent, featuring a dental floss version of Vampirella’s traditional red one-piece that is very much in keeping with the overly sexualized stories and art featured in Balent’s work on Tarot. This cover suggests a nineties era boobs before plot mentality, but the interiors suggest something altogether different. Arthur Adams, who drew our feature, is also well known for rendering sexy, buxom babes, although with highly appealing artistic flair and talent for character acting that rivals Kevin Maguire’s. His Vampirella costume is more modest than Balent’s, actually covering most of her chest and giving her some small dignity. Adams is also a damn fine monster artist and he gets to put all of that on display in this story, which sees Vampi trying to save a group of innocent bug monsters from confused and bloodthirsty townspeople in a Kurt Busiek penned version of the well worn “the monsters are the good guys” horror trope.

Catwoman #1,000,000

“Nine Million Lives”

Cover Price: $1.99
Bargain Price: $0.25
Cover Date: November 1993

DC Comics hates the obsessive compulsive comic book reader, a fact they’ve show with both their #0 tie-ins to Zero Hour and their #1,000,000 tie-ins to Grant Morrison’s DC One Million crossover event. During the month DC One Million came out, every book in DC’s line was numbered 1,000,000, even if it had no particular reason to tie into the JLA-centric story. Enter Catwoman #1,000,000. When I saw this thing in the quarter bin, I thought I’d struck gold: Jim Balent era Catwoman in the far future, with the ridiculous breasts and (God help me) computer cable dreadlock hair? Sign me up. Sadly, the book was both more ridiculous and less ridiculous than I dreamed. The plot, such as it is, focuses on the Catwoman of the future (I was really hoping to see Selina Kyle unnecessarily thrust into the future, but c’est la vie) trying to break into the future Batcave on Pluto for non-future Batman. For 22 pages, she runs around, fighting weird monsters and thrusting various body parts, but, as campy and titillating as that sounds, it’s all just so rote. There is no fun here or any of the winking of the camera that someone like Amanda Conner pulls off effortlessly, just a strange seriousness about things that I can’t imagine ever caring about. Still, whether I like it or not, someone certainly does, as Balent’s been making a living off this very thing for years now, whether Chris Sims wants him to or not.