After a maddeningly baffling first story arc, Christopher Priest’s Vampirella series started to move towards coherence in issue #5, and things were looking up.

Yet we’re back to square one here, with another ridiculously convoluted set of intertwining narrative threads, very few of which seem to go anywhere or justify their inclusion in any way. It all just feels like Priest is writing multiple storylines a few pages at a time, relevance and coherence be damned. It’s also full of weirdly stupid little details, such as Vampirella simply apologising to the police for killing undercover agents, and this being accepted with, basically, a shrug.

And I don’t even know what happened in the final scene; it’s genuinely confusing.

The only redeeming feature is Davis Goetten’s art, which is pretty consistently excellent, though one or two panels could be a bit clearer from a storytelling perspective.

I don’t know why I’m persisting with this series; it’s painfully bad, and I know I’m not alone in thinking that. It’s just such a missed opportunity; any other Vampirella comics I’ve read have been dumb, but fun. It’s like Priest has tried to add substance to the style, but completely overcooked it and missed the mark by a wide margin.

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