Vampirella #4 - "Seduction of the Innocent, Book 4: Witchcraft"

[laughing_tree]

Sampling a bunch of Vampi stories from varying runs, I realized there really is no overarching master continuity for the character the way, say, the Fantastic Four has. There are fits and starts and then new beginnings, including this one. As a result, Vampirella seemed to me to be rather disconnected from most life on earth, with only fleeting connections to friends and family. That kind of isolation can’t be healthy.

I remember reading a Rolling Stone interview with Springsteen way back during Born in The USA where Springsteen said something about how everyone needs human connection, something to the effect of, “Without community, we’d all go crazy and kill ourselves.”

I think the fleeting nature of Vampirella’s connections to community must make life very difficult for her. It would also make her extremely reluctant to trust, to even begin forming connections, because she knows sooner or later a new writer will come along and shake up the Etch A Sketch again.

-- Christopher J. Priest

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Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

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In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

It's hard to ignore the main topic of news this week; Covid19 and it's remarkable impact on so much of the world, from travel lock downs in Italy. to disruption of interntional stock markets, to almost embarassing scenes of panic buying of toilet roll in the US and the UK (though if I had to pick a product I wouldn't want to run out of if stuck in the house for a long period of time, loo roll would be VERY high on the list). Stay safe, but stay sane, and WASH YOUR HANDS people! (Not that I think SD members would need much advice on that, we being paragons of such things).

Legendary actor Max von Sydow has died aged 90... Though given he played chess with Death in Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" AND played the Ming the Merciless in "Flash Gordon", I wouldn't rule out him returning in a surprise twist.

We also lost David Wise last week, you might not recognise the name, but as well as writing some rather good BTAS episodes (He introduced the Riddler in "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?") he was the show runner for the 1980's TMNT cartoon, and is responsible for giving Eastman and Laird's slightly generic characters their own unique traits. (Apparently, and thank you to "The Arkham Sessions" for mentioning this, he said early on that he couldn't write for the characters as they were, so assigned each of them a personality based on one of the words in the title, so Michelangelo was "Teenage", Donatello was "Mutant", Leonardo was "Ninja" and Raphael was "Turtle"). He was thus also responsible for making "Cowabunga!" a pop culture phenomenon.

For no very obvious reason, I've been revisiting the "Galavant" series of a few years back, a half-hour musical comdey riff on just about every fantasy trope going with songs by Steven "Godspell/Wicked" Schwartz Alan (Little Shop of Horrors, Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Weird Romance, etc) Menken and Glen Slater, and gosh is that still a silly, fun series, with some VERY catchy songs and is JUST what I was in the mood for!

At the other end of the scale the BBC's adaption of Mallorie Blackman's "Noughts and Crosses" has just started broadcast and looks stunning. The main plot of star-crossed lovers separated by race and privilege is a little thin so far (And apparently they've aged up the two main characters by a few years, as typically seems to be the case with YA adaptions) but the cast is impressive, and the overall realisation on screen of a world and culture where Africa colonised Europe centuries ago (rather than vice versa) is amazing. Think Black Panther without the Kirby-tech, just a different general aesthetic to building designs over several centuries.

"Picard" has a slightly slower episode, which managed to kill off ANOTHER engaing character, and introduced the other two guest stars we knew were going to crop up; Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, as we discover what the Troi-Riker's have been up to since we last saw them.

I haven't seen the new US version of "War of the Worlds", any word on whether that's worth a look or not?

Nice to see Bumblebee still picking up work in the downtime between movies, even if it is just an advert

Oh, and coming very soon, some new theme week plans, because we haven't done those in a while and have some prime contenders.

Superman: Villains #1

[cyberghostface]

( Lex Luthor's answering machine )