Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett talks about the Vampirella revival and briefly visits Disney comics before covering the return of 4Kids to anime, and why it might be successful.

Well Dynamite Entertainment has acquired another classic character but I’ve got to confess I’ve never been the biggest fan of Vampirella.  With the exception of The Spirit I never read any of the Warren magazines as they were coming out and only started reading her comics during the Grant Morrison/Mark Millar/Amanda Conner run.  But recently I’ve started to slowly work my way through the complete run of Vampirella magazine and recommend Dynamite do the same because I believe they’ll discover that in all the subsequent revivals an important part of her character has been missing.  And I don’t mean her ever changing origin (in case you missed it  the last miniseries established she had always been a form of fiction that infects people).

It’s easy to disparage these stories for being dated (and they were very much a part of a rapidly retreating ‘now’) or for the fact Vampirella had a relatively passive role in them, sometimes reduced to being just a storyteller (I confess that I myself have more than once referred to her here as “arm candy”).  But after reading the Warren stories I learned that not only was she drawn much better back then but she was also a more well rounded (not like that) character.

Ordinarily you don’t think of a red thong suit with a white collar and thigh-high boots as being ‘elegant’ (especially once combined with Vampirella’s favorite accessory, a long leopard print coat that just screamed “off the clock stripper”) but she always carried herself with grace.  She was also capable of smiling, took pleasure in the little things of life and definitely had a healthy interest in the opposite sex; compare that with what she became, an angry supernatural superhero who only existed to fight and kill other vampires.  

Obviously Dynamite doesn’t need any help from me but when it comes time to reinvent her again they probably should consider the elements of gothic romance in the Warren stories.  Only a couple of years ago they would have been positively antique but now thanks to Twilight they’re utterly contemporary.

While they’re at it maybe they should reinvent the whole tired vampire genre.  In a 90’s Vampirella story writer Warren Ellis floated the notion that in the coming century (ours) all the old rules for fighting vampires would go out the window and you would be able to repel one with the image of anything you believed strongly in, from the Coke logo to the Nike swoop.  No one else seems to have picked up on it and it’s definitely too good an idea to go to waste.

First a Darkwing Duck miniseries and now Duck Tales will be showing up in Walt Disney Comics & Stories.  BOOM! Studios decision to use both properties is proof they’re chasing a younger demographic of Disney fan than Gladstone ever did.  And the way they keep rolling out new titles hopefully suggests that someone has actually found a way to make money publishing Disney Comics.  And while we’re on the topic Travis Beatty of BOOM! Studios was good enough to respond to my email to inform me the publisher has no current plans to produce Phineas & Ferb comics.  I’m going to stay positive and assume this just means we’ll see some coming out under the Disney Publishing imprint.

I read with interest the ICv2 story "4Kids Returning to Licensing" (from 3/18/2010).  It’s your classic cautionary business fable about the company that leaves behind their ‘core menu’ with disastrous results who then tries to get back to where they were by using the model that once brought them profitability.  Though you do have to admire the way 4Kids Chairman and CEO Al Kahn owned up to the obvious.  

I think what 4Kids mostly did wrong was making the mistake that kids like anime.  Like I said in my column from October 10, 2008 (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--The King of Cartoons"), it was an easy assumption to make, seeing as how kids loved Pokemon and Pokemon was anime.  But what kids seemed to like about Pokemon was the wish fulfillment and elements of game play which is why anime shows they had them were successes (Yu-Gi-Oh!, Bakugon Battle Brawlers, etc.) and those that didn’t (One Piece, Shaman King, etc.) weren’t.  And after enough anime failures broadcasters started replacing Japanese shows with (presumably cheaper) Canadian ones.

Well yesterday 4Kids announced their first new acquisition, the 39-episodeJapanese/ Korean animated series Tai Chi Chasers (Tai Chi Senjimon), a combination of cell and computer graphics from Toei Animation which seems to contain all of the elements I was talking about (please to note the cards the kids are clutching in their hands).

The opinions expressed in this column are solely  those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.