Vampirella: Armageddon #3 // Review
“Being digested gives you a chance to think.” That’s what he says halfway into the comic book. He is, of course, being digested at the time that he utters those words, so it’s not like the sentence comes out of nowhere. By the time he mentions it. Vampirella has had a few pages to listen to him. Nit that she has a whole lot of choice or anything like that. She is, afterall, being digested right along with him in Vampirella: Armageddon #3. Writer Tom Sniegoski and artist Kewber Baal continue a long, horrible journey for the beloved vampire with colorist Omi Ramalante Jr.
Vampirella and the decaying corpse of the man who is talking to her are in the body of a giant worm. In Hell. Literally. Both of them and the worm are on their way to a war in Hell, which doesn’t exactly sound like a nice place to be given the current circumstances. Nevertheless, the gentleman in question IS actually really, really happy to see Vampirella. And it’s not like she has a choice in the matter, so he’s going to have quite literally a captive audience as the both of them are slthered off to war in the sands of Hell.
Sneigoski frames some pretty interesting horror for the third issue of the series. Traditional concepts and locations that often find home in the genre our place on the page in clever way overall plot of the story continues to develop in that mutate traditional concepts for the genre and the character questions. It's delightfully weird but at the same time also somewhat comedic. The cleverness of the issue never quite undercuts the overall nightmare. Sneigoski’s script manages to balance itself perfectly between nightmare and sketch comedy it's not something that often attempted. And when it is attempted, it's not brought across with the kind of sharpness and clarity that Sniegoski manages here.
It's really difficult to take traditional concepts of a very traditional sort of hell and make them seem authentically horrifying. Artist has been taking a swing at this for centuries. Very difficult to the original with the overall concept the writer isn't exactly giving the artist a whole lot opportunity to do something that's truly original. So it's kind of awkward. However, Baal does a remarkably good job of making it compelling if it's not terribly original, there are some powerful moments of action that strike across the page with impressive force. It can be pretty overwhelming in places. And it actually manages a bit of beauty here there.
“I hate puppets!” there was a line that one might have never anticipated Vampirella uttering. The way it does. It's not always gracefully funny. But it does a good job of bringing across a disorienting. Pleasant mix of different moods, motions and emotions. There might be more compelling ways to bring across the concept of a war in Hell, but they might not necessarily be nearly as fun as the one Sneigoski and company are bringing to the page here.
