Crisis Hits Vampirella: The Dark Powers

Vampirella: The Dark Powers got off to an unsteady beginning, both artistically and editorially. Thankfully, just as the arc is about to end, the ship has been mostly righted and we're cruising into the climactic battle that will pit Vampirella -- now a full-fledged superhero and member of the pan-dimensional Project -- against her fellow heroes from other Plural Earths.

Our heroine has completed her time as an inductee to The Project, having shadowed The Flame on his world and now being monitored by The Black Terror on her own (Plural Earth 0666, appropriately enough). But Vampi has twigged onto something strange: when the Project picked her out, she was the only person on her world with powers. Since her training and return, suddenly extranormal beings are popping up all over the place -- and all of them villains. Terror assures her this is actually normal -- that once one superpower shows up, others begin to follow suit. He's there to make sure Vampi keeps her more fatalistic urges in check, and it appears that Vampirella is beginning to gain recognition, publicly, as a superhero.

But the bigger threat is yet to come, revealed when Vampirella responds to a threat alone, discovering only afterward why Black Terror didn't join her. It's all the lead-up to a major confrontation that could be the deadliest of Vampirella's short heroic career.

Dan Abnett has made the idea of Vampirella as a superhero work, even though it took a few issues to get the motor warmed up. And while the issue has been parsed out to a handful of artists -- Jonathan lau, Alessandro Miracolo, Vincenzo federici, and Jordi Perez -- there isn't as much jarring changes in style as previous issues have exhibited. I don't know how many issues this book is slated for, but I'd hate to see it come to a conclusion just when it was beginning to get really interesting.