2 out of 5

I’m being generous by allotting this two stars, as I’d much rather toss the comic in the trash and give it a matching rating.  But I’m trying to sit on that instinct a bit and acknowledge some of the efforts put in here, as well as trying to view this with the understanding that I’m far and away from the target audience (which is presumably teen girls).

It’s highly probable I would have stayed away from this property if I had recognized it as being part of a toy launch, one that apparently took advantage of a trending obsession with blending monsters with the color pink, but I think I missed the cultural recognizability window as these single issues are coming out a year after their initial print as, I believe, three hardcover collections in 2014.  So that would’ve been the year of over-exposure, and I got swept up in the wake.  Okay, you say, but why did this particular wake appeal?  Well, I have gotten into the habit of checking out Action Labs, A, because they’ve proven to have a good mix of creator originals and youth-geared lit, the latter of which I’m also a fan, B, and the series passed my initial perusal as the first ish implied there would be deeper implication to the story than there turned out to be, C.  In short: dig the publisher, dig the general genre, and a good first issue.

Vamplets is your typical teen fantasy story: hate the day-to-day grind, transported to a fantasy world where all is well.  Our lead is Destiny Harper, aimless student working at a corndog counter, who answers a babysitting ad that turns out to be for a gig in “Gloomvania,” which is home to the “Vamplets” – baby vampires – and also, conveniently for marketing of multiple toys, I guess, cyclops and werewolves and whatnot.  Now, I mention some positives up above, and they’re featured throughout this setup: the outsider who doesn’t dig the current fashions and ain’t the most social creature is a usual narrative hook for all of us who for whatever reasons feel alone (and yet can be marketed to in the millions), and Middleton and Dwonch – at this point in our tale, anyway – don’t overdo it.  The temptation, with the overly pink and purple color scheme of the comic, would be to goth or steampunk Destiny up, and dress up her origin with plenty of things to hate so that she can embrace “the darkness” of Gloomvania.  But she’s mostly a normal teen who just likes thrift shops.  And there’s also the suggestion of some logic to drawing a human into monster world, as it seems that these Vamplets are born from a Poof after the simplest profession of love, and yet monster parents have no desire to take care of their children.

You can see how that could be some subtle commentary, yes?  Only it’s a throwaway detail, and it ceases to matter as soon as Destiny learns more about her charges – and the Nightmare Nursery (the original name of this arc in the HC editions) – in the following issue.  Because oh, how mortals are loathed in Gloomvania, where bad means good and terrible means wonderful, and boy how all the residents hope Destiny fails in her task – three strikes from overlord Mr. G and she’s out – and then her punishment will be… to not get to go home?  We hate humans, so let’s invite them here to work and then if they fail, prevent them from leaving?  Yes, this is completely sensible.  As is the other random human who appears – confusingly named Pandemonious Dirge (because that’s a Gloomvania name, not really a human one, even if we’re going to let “Destiny” pass) – who is loved by the monsters.  Because he plays music?  I guess?  Anyway, he’s attractive, so let’s also trash that “reasonable” character design mentioned above and have Destiny go googly-eyes over him.  Cute boy??  OMG!!

Furthermore, and I assume this is done just to piss me off, there are random editor’s notes to learn more about certain things in other Vamplets stories, which is a bullshit move to pull in what’s intended to be an intro arc.  But then again, there’s absolutely no concern about actually showing or communicating time passing, so what seems like the next day in our storyline is or could be a few months, I dunno.  Plenty of time for whole other Vamplets series to occur, and, like, collect ’em all.

Furthermore futhermore, the whole “you say good, we say evil” thing is applied… when the writers felt like it.  This is a minor thing overall, and much less bothersome than the plotting dumbing down that occurs, but it’s admittedly a pet peeve: if you’re going to do something like this, you’ve got to keep it up.  Kids won’t care, I know.  But goddammit, us obsessive 30+ yr old dudes do.

I could go on, for sure, but I won’t.  The summary is that what felt like a moderately intelligent book for teen girls quickly devolves into stupid dress-up fantasies with zero depth or positive lessons to learn.  The art, by Amanda Coronado and Bill Blankenship, is appreciably busy: they experiment with points of view on occasion, and there are a lot of characters that they manage to stuff in to most panels, always doing something indicative of their saleable attribute (e.g. Bitey, the monster who Bites! or whatever).  There are also, admittedly, a couple of gags that are pretty funny – quippy responses that, again, suggest there are intelligent people writing this thing.  But they only extended that intelligence so far before going into ghost writing mode to shoehorn in problems and solutions and characters.

I can only suppose that if your youngun is obsessed with Vamplets the toy, this comic is for them, and they’ll enjoy it in all its pinkness.  I highly doubt, though, that you’re going to get buy-in going the other way.