Deanna Destito: How has it been expanding the Vampirella universe and including much more dynamic characters to her world?
Christopher Priest: Fun, truly. I received right here, seemed round, and couldn’t discover Lois or Jimmy or Lex Luthor. There actually wasn’t a lot infrastructure to play with as each Vampirella author has been, to no matter extent, granted free reign to combine up their very own pot of stew. This simply occurs to be mine.
Draculina was truly the primary character we noticed on the primary web page of my first subject, Vampirella #0, launched for Free Comic Book Day 2019. Katie, our pre-teen Vampirette, is an alt-reality model of Draculina (or is it vice-versa?). To a pretty big extent, my total journey on Vampirella has been telling, and now continues to inform, the story of Draculina, Lilith’s misplaced baby.
Destito: What prompted the choice to present Draculina her personal collection?
Priest: Pure greed. (Laughs) I don’t know. Somebody referred to as me. I used to be blissful as a result of I had requested Dynamite to finish our Vampirella run at 25, however I actually had not completed Katie/Draculina’s story. So we’re getting to try this now.
The grownup survivor of kid abuse, Draculina is, finally, a deeply wounded one that manifests her disappointment and damage as maniacal scheming. Perhaps the best irony is the parallelism between Draculina, who’s consumed by hate, being the daughter her mom Lilith is so captivated with. Meanwhile, Vampirella, the kid Lilith conceived solely in an effort to seek out the daughter she’d misplaced, is the extra balanced and, I assume, “normal” of the 2, regardless of having been repeatedly deserted by her personal mom (see our Vampirella Year One collection, now transport).
Destito: What can readers anticipate to see between Draculina and Katie?
Priest: To our new readers: the preteen Katie beforehand loved a form of Billy Batson-Shazam relationship with Draculina, with the 2 sharing a singular existence right here in our actuality. The mystic linkage between the 2 was severed on the conclusion of our earlier collection, so now each “selves” exist on the identical time.
At the climax of our earlier quantity, Katie snaps at her alt-self Draculina, ostensibly telling her to get a life and cease wallowing in grievance over perceived wrongs.
In this collection, Draculina concludes Katie was proper and units about to just do that: free herself of the darkish cloud she’d been beneath. But, her being Draculina, she chooses to go about this in probably the most dysfunctional manner possible.
Destito: There are a number of huge Vampi names showing on this guide. Are there plans for an additional collection to department off starring one other from her household?
Priest: Oh, that’s a Nick Barrucci query. We have main plans for Vampirella in our upcoming Rage guide, which begins after Vampirella Year One concludes this spring. You can anticipate Draculina to play a serious function in that collection, and there’s additionally a yet-to-be-titled guide that includes yet one more model of Draculina, Vampi’s ex-girlfriend Victory, who cameos right here in Blood Simple.
Destito: Why do you get pleasure from enjoying within the Vampirella world?
Priest: Well, for those who determine Draculina’s nihilism makes her a brief automobile journey away from being The Joker in a string bikini, Vampirella’s sweetness and, nicely, her normalcy, allows me to construct tales round common themes of household, group, and belonging. Everybody needs group, all people needs objective and acceptance, love and success. Everybody has skilled rejection and failure, mourning and defeat. Everybody has been afraid of the darkish.
Vampirella has traditionally been a reasonably undeveloped character inside an underdeveloped artistic universe. That creates an virtually boundless frontier of exploration, discovering ideas which were ready for us all alongside.
I’m actually grateful to have the wonderful Michael Sta. Maria and [colorist] Ivan Nunes alongside for the journey. Their work evokes me, main me to lots of these discoveries with the magic they make use of in bringing phrases to life. I typically don’t even know who a personality really is till Michael and Ivan animate them and have them strolling or flying, biting or eviscerating. Honestly, to me, it’s simply magic to see these things come to life, and Draculina then begins speaking to me, writing her personal story.
Look for Draculina: Blood Simple #1 on retailer cabinets in February.
Discussion about this post