Elementals: The Vampire’s Revenge (1996) #1-2 by Bill Willingham, Kelly McQuain, Neil E. Trais, Marat Mychaels and others
Heh, if I had a dollar for every time the post-bankruptcy Comico editorials promised that they were now going to release comics on time, I’d have… enough money for a couple of ice-creams at least.
Anyway, Willingham is credited with “story” on this series, which is pretty unusual. My guess would be that this means that Comico cribbed this series from the “bible” that Willingham wrote for them when he got out of his contract with Comico. But that may be totally wrong, and perhaps he really wrote this? (There’s nobody credited with “script” or anything like that on this…)
But what’s it all about? Yes, the Elementals had killed a bunch of vampires, and they’re now at a vampire tribunal to answer for their crimes. But… didn’t this already happen in the main Elementals series? Or perhaps the tribunal had just started when Comico went on hiatus, and these are the issues that were supposed to cover that?
No, that can’t be right… they were in the middle of the Oblivion War when that happened.
OK, I can’t be bothered to go back and do research — I’m just saying that this is a confusing series to be releasing at this point.
The artwork is pretty professional, but I’m wondering what they were using as reference material!
Oh, OK, so the plot here is that Ratman is going to have to travel all over the world to gather four magical objects to vanquish the vampire tribunal? Well, that’s a classic plot for sure.
Oh oh oh! Back before Comico went on hiatus, there was a Ratman mini-series promised, written by Bill Willingham! This must be that mini-series, just rebranded! OK, so now it makes a bit more sense.
Heh, the second issue mistakenly has the inside front cover from Elementals: How The War Was Won. Well, you can’t pay attention to all these details.
But anyway, how is this mini-series? Besides being confused, it’s kinda boring.
I guess Willingham really did write this book?
And this is how it ends. There was supposed to be four issues, but Comico went AWOL without saying anything once again in August 1996, so the rest of the series was never published.
This series got zero press at the time. Zilch. And I can find nobody talking about this series on the intertubes, either, so I guess it’s one of those books that have been lost in time, and for good reasons.