Vampirella Winder Special 2026 #1 // Review
Vampirella hates the winter. They’re miserable. The darkness crowding-out the light. The rain. The sleet. The snow. The tranquilizer dart hitting her in the side as she flies through the night in the city. It’s going to be a particularly rough January evening for her in Vampirella Winder Special 2026 #1. Writer Liam Johnson and artist Marc Borstel plant a charming action adventure story onto the page with colorist Jordi Escuín Llorach. It's a fun story that fits together quite well on the page in an amidst a deeply enjoyable action story. Above home, the overall feeling of winter permeates the issue with deep sense of atmosphere that really brings the special together.
Vampirella’s body is already fighting the effects of the tranquilizer before she even has a chance to register the fact that she’s been hit. She’s feeling the bite of the chemicals with enough strength to know that a normal person would be completely passed out from the dart. Of course...a npormal person wouldn’t be gliding through the Manhattan skyline at night on hint bat wings. So it’s not like she isn’t some kind of an impressive target. It’s not like she isn’t going to have to figure out who wants to capture her.
Johnson firmly establishes the sense of action from the first page and just keeps moving with it throughout the issue. It's very impressive work on the hole. There's a lot of momentum that it's built up over the course of the issue. There’s real wit and bite in Vampirella’s internal monologue as narration that Johnsoncleverly crafts in a thoroughly satisfying package that place out quite well in a really appealing one-shot story. Vampirella remains the central focus of a really fun adventure that shoots across the page with great grace.
The atmosphere of the adventure feels quite immersive on the page. Part of this has to do with really good framing on the part of Borstel. Quite a bit of it has to deal with the brilliant work done in color by Llorach. Vampirella looks as beautifuul as she does formdable in a world that has great depth, texture and dramatic lighting. The snow dances across the page with a beautiful chill that feels right at home on the comics rack in the last ful month of winter. Action shoots across the page with great force. There's a beautiful sense of drama about everything. It looks quite good.
Playoff in a special issue or an annual might be hit the rack in a way that feels kind of perfunctory. In order for a standalone one shot to really make a whole lot of sense, though, it really has to justify its own existence beyond the narrative of the ongoing series that it helps support. This is a perfect example of that. The winter special relief feels like it's special. From the beautiful artwork to the width of the story to the immersive of the atmosphere that the colorist is being able to bring to the page at all works so remarkably well.
