Vampirella Manga 2999 Ash Can
Issue #1 (December 1998)
Regular Cover - Kevin Lau (3,000 copies) $7.95
Signed (Biederman) Regular Cover - Kevin Lau $19.95
Signed (Biederman, Bogart) Regular Cover - Kevin Lau $24.95
Leather Cover - Kevin Lau (500 copies) $14.95
Vampirella Manga 2999 A.D. [Artists - Kevin Lau, Kam Ling Ng / Writer - David Bogart, Seth Biederman]
Neo-Tokyo: 2999, and Vampirella (and Pantha) are the city's protectors. A series of crazed robots start to destroy the city, the first couple of which are stopped by Vampirella and Pantha. The third robot is harder to fight and the girls are saved at the last minute by Johnny Banzai. Johnny immediately starts to woo the grateful Vampirella, but Pantha smells a rat. It turns out that Johnny is responsible for the city wrecking robots, which he created so he could impress Vampirella when he "defeated" them.
Vampirella smashes his remote control panel and the robot goes on the rampage for real. Using Johnny as a human missile she defeats the robot and she and Pantha slink off into the sunset.
A slightly tongue in cheek story in true manga style - both artwork and storytelling.
A brave move on the part of Harris Publishing as the two heroines are quite removed from the Vampirella and Pantha of today. There are enough similarities in their costumes to distinguish that they are future versions of the current ladies (or our gals a thousand years from now), but it seems odd that they are so young!
I don't often ponder on how old Vampirella is - after all, she was at least 19-20 back in 1969 which makes her about... it doesn't bear thinking about! Though she looks very good for her age! OK, I concede that in the comic universe time moves at a different rate, but she must be in her mid twenties to early thirties. She is a mature woman.
In this black and white story both she and Pantha are portrayed in looks and character as teenagers. The whole story has a "teen-appeal" feel to it, which is typical manga. An enjoyable romp, but it certainly isn't "my" Vampirella.
There were a few of the regular and leather covers signed by Kevin Lau on eBay when this was first published. At the time I thought they might have been Harris produced, "official" signed comics but I have not seen them again anywhere in the intervening years so I now believe that they were only a handful of one-offs.