3 out of 5

Confirmed: I’m not a Vampirella guy.  Also, as a fun fact – the indicia on this book lists it as FEATY TALES.  Yuk yuk.

Anyhow, as pitched by Nancy A. Collins in a recent Comic Shop News I twas browsing, Faery Tales is a limited anthology series, starring Vampi in a couple short tales each book with a framing narrative by Collins herself.  I gave this a chance because Steve Bissette will be on an issue, and I like anthologies.  I do think Vampirella is generic enough to be a fun character with the right writer, I don’t really find her all that interesting in general.  While Ms. Collins mostly takes a light, meta touch with her framing arc – Vampi finds a magic book which draws her in, ‘narrating’ to her in puns, before dropping her into the features by that issue’s creative teams – she also wants to tie it in to her ongoing, and so we waste a couple boring pages with editor’s notes referencing the non-limited series.  Which sorta’ took me out of things right away and reminded me that I’m not big on vampire soap opera.  But Jack Jadson’s classic, Buscema-esque art gives it a nice campy feel, so that’s okay.

In this ish, Devin Grayson does a Bluebeard sendup which doesn’t benefit from either poor script directions and a rushed ending from Grayson or poor layout decisions (and overly sexualized boobage, which is hard to do with Vampi) from artist Ronilson Freire, but John Shirley and artists Elmo Bondoc’s Cinderella variation is choppy but silly fun, Bondoc giving it a uniquely sketchy art style with nice use of panel placement.

This is apparently an update of an old Harris mag where Vampi would present tales (like Creepy or Eerie); of course this would look great in magazine size (especially with the David Roach variant cover I bought) but I understand that’s cost-prohibitive.  The first issue is a bit too generic to make it a must read, though since Collins hopefully got her “read my other series!” nods out of the way and we can sink more into the anthology format, mayhaps the rest of the series will feel a bit more fun and a bit more balanced.