Vampirella's Summer Nights
Volume #1 (1992)
Regular Cover - Art Adams $3.75
Vampirella meets Creepy and Eerie [J.J. Birch, John Nyberg, art - Steve Englehart, story]
Vampirella is accosted by some street thugs and resists their advances. A passing police officer sees her standing over three prone thugs and arrests her. On the way to the police station the police car dies outside an old and spooky house, and the police officer asks for help.Cousin Eerie and Uncle Spooky invite them in, kill the policeman and entrap Vampirella. Using her hypnosis Vampirella escapes and manages to blow up the house which then reforms itself as if nothing had ever happened.Cousin Eerie and Uncle Spooky watch as Vampirella walks away, but vow their paths will meet again.The Reach of the Dead [Dave Cockrum, Stan Shaw, art - Kurt Busiek, story]
Adam van Helsing goes to investigate a deserted church in Montana haunted by a Tomb Vetch - a creature that inhabits graveyards and eats people. Freeing the trapped people inside the church, Adam takes on the beast and kills it.Magic Tricks [James Fry, Steve Leialoha, art - Kurt Busiek, story]
Pendragon is performing at a run down club, the club where he originally met his wife, Rose. Rose had left Pendragon for another man who had beat her and crippled her, and she had sought refuge with a local criminal gang. Pendragon's daughter, Sarah, blamed Pendragon for deserting her and her mother and had left word that he was to be killed if he ever returned. Local gang members drag Pendragon outside and beat him up, but they are stopped by Patrick Granville, his grandson, who bears Pendragon no malice.Restless Spirit [Richard Howell, Ricardo Villagran, art - Kurt Busiek, story]
Having died in the Morning In America series, we are reintroduced to Chelsea who was accidentally revived by a construction worker removing the stake from her heart. Resting in a warehouse she meets the ghost of a girl who died in 1895. Chelsea takes her out to see the world of the 1990's. They have fun at the cinema and shopping mall, and the ghost loses the misery that was keeping her Earth-bound and moves on, leaving Chelsea alone ... again.
This seems to be an issue that gets the current readership up to speed on the Harris version of Vampirella and the main characters of the comics to come. Vampirella, Adam van Helsing and Pendragon have a solo story each, as does the vampire Chelsea - though Chelsea would not last long in the Harris "Vampirella-verse".
In the centre of the book here is a pull out centrefold with a Vampirella painting by Brian Stelfreeze obverse, and a history of Vampirella by Kurt Busiek on the reverse. The history covers the inception, creation, production, problems and eventual demise of the Warren Publishing series of Vampirella, and provides some interesting insights and some hints for the future direction of the character.