Vampirella #1: "Goddess from the Sea"

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The Bettie Page of the vampire world, Vampirella was introduced by Warren Publishing in 1969. The Vampirella magazine, like Warren's Creepy and Eerie, was black-and-white, aimed at a somewhat older audience, and sold for fifty cents. A Frank Frazetta color cover introduced Vampi to readers, showing her in her terse crimson costume, posing with one spike-heeled foot resting on a human skull. Sci-fi maven Forrest J. Ackerman, who was editing Famous Monsters for Warren, came up with the name, and in the early issues Vampi was played for laughs. When Tom Sutton became the artist with the eighth issue things got serious. Scripts by Archie Goodwin helped convert Vampirella into a viable vampire. A typical good/bad girl, she sometimes gave in to the urge to sink her teeth into somebody's throat, but she also built a career as a sexy ghostbuster, aided by her mentor Pendragon. Vampi usually appeared in the opening story with the rest of the issue given over to assorted horror tales. The magazine ended in 1983.

Since then the virtuous vampire has been brought back to life several times and is now published by Dynamite Entertainment.



Credits

Cover painting: Frank Frazetta
Script: Don Glut
Pencils: Neal Adams
Inks:Neal Adams

Reprinted:

• in Vampirella Annual (Warren, 1972 series) #1
• in Eerie (Warren, 1966 series) #125
  

Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #1: "Savage World!"

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Al Williamson (March 21, 1931 – June 12, 2010) was the leading exponent of the heroic adventure style introduced by Alex Raymond in Flash Gordon. A genuine boy wonder, Williamson started in comic books when he was only seventeen. He moved from Heroic Comics to Toby Press's John Wayne in 1950 and had Frank Frazetta inking some of his pages. He next drew some very imaginative fantasy and science-fiction stories for such titles as Forbidden Worlds and Out of the Night. In 1952 he went to work for EC Comics.

Williamson drew a wide range of EC titles, including Weird Fantasy, Valor, and Piracy. In the middle 1960s he actually got to draw Flash Gordon, when King Features ventured into comic books. In addition, he drew the Secret Agent Corrigan strip for King from 1967 to 1980. The first artist on the strip, when it was titled Secret Agent X-9, was Williamson's idol Alex Raymond.

Over the last ten years or so of his professional career Williamson concentrated on inking, chiefly for Marvel. A recent hardcover, Al Williamson Adventures, collects some of his best earlier comic work.



Credits

Cover Painting: Frank Kelly Freas
Script: Wally Wood.
Pencils: Al Williamson (layouts); Al Williamson (pencils / signed); Angelo Torres; Roy Krenkel
Inks: Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, Frank Frazetta.
Letters: Arlene Williamson.

This story was originally prepared for Lev Gleason's The Adventures of Buster Crabbe before the company went out of business. Rewritten by Wallace Wood for Witzend. Reprinted from Witzend (Wallace Wood, 1966 series) #1. For the back story on Savage World, see Death Rattle v2 #10 at end of post.

For another version of this story in color, please click here.













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An introduction to "Savage World"