Vampirella – { feuilleton }

Hades II (2004) by Ana Maria Pacheco.

• I’ve been reading a lot of Angela Carter over the past few weeks so the news of her house in Clapham being awarded a blue plaque was coincidental but also timely. Related: Angela Carter Online, and The Holy Family Album (1991), “a sacrilegious take on the history of Christian painting and iconography” written and narrated by Carter. Also, we’re still some distance from Halloween but take this as a precursor: Vampirella (1976), Angela Carter’s first radio play for the BBC, starring Anna Massey as a vampire countess.

• In May this year the Dark Entries record label announced the discovery of more tapes from Patrick Cowley’s pre-disco years in the 1970s. A selection from the archive, Mechanical Fantasy Box, will be released next month, together with a book of the same name reprinting Cowley’s homoerotic journal from the period.

• More Magma (there’s always more Magma): Warren Hatter on 7 essential albums from their sprawling discography. Related: Magma on film in 1972, appearing in Moi y’en a vouloir des sous, a short but typically intense performance.

• Out in November: Paul Wegener’s adaptation of Gustav Meyrink, Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920), receives a substantial blu-ray release from Eureka.

• Joe Banks’ forthcoming space-rock exegesis, Hawkwind: Days of the Underground, now has its own website.

• Mix of the week: The Stations Of Summer by Cafe Kaput.

• Photos of London’s abandoned Underground stations.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Alan Boyce grows invisible.

• Gudrun Gut‘s favourite albums.

• Tanz Der Vampire (1969) by The Vampires Of Dartmoore | Ketch Vampire (1976) by Devon Irons | Vampires (1999) by Pet Shop Boys

Psychedelic Kali from Vampirella 18.

Copies of the Dracula comics may be scarce these days but two of the artists who appeared in the title—Esteban Maroto and José Beá—were also appearing regularly in Vampirella around the same time. The Internet Archive has a large collection of Warren titles including an almost complete run of Vampirella. Esteban Maroto’s work stands out for me for his draughtsmanship, his page layouts, the atmosphere of heady eroticism, and the frequent touches of psychedelia of which the panel above is one of the more striking examples. The best strips are the ones he wrote himself; when he works with American writers the results tend to be more restrained. It’s a shame Vampirella was mostly a black-and-white title, so many of these pages would benefit from the same colour treatment as Wolff.

Wolf Hunt from Vampirella 14.

And speaking of wolves, there’s a similar collection of witches and lycanthropes in these stories.

Tomb of the Gods: Horus from Vampirella 17.

Tomb of the Gods is a short series in which mythological stories are explored Maroto-style. The exception is Gender Bender, a piece of science fiction with masculine and feminine psyches pitted against each other in a virtual arena. The story title is a surprise for anyone thinks that phrase originated in the 1980s.

Tomb of the Gods: Kali from Vampirella 18.

Continue reading “More Esteban Maroto”

Tag: Vampirella

Weekend links 482

More Esteban Maroto