Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Brandon Jerwa, Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, mark waid, vampirella

Mark Waid Talks With Brandon Jerwa About Vampirella

Published Tue, 04 Feb 2014 19:00:31 -0600

In our second day of Mark Waid acting as interviewer, he chats with Vampirella scribe Brandon Jerwa about the latest on the iconic bad girl and her Dynamite Entertainment series.

Mark Waid: Brandon, let's just assume I haven't read every comic ever published. USE YOUR IMAGINATION! Now–tell me, a "new reader," who Vampirella is in one sentence.

Brandon Jerwa: Vampirella is a supernatural heroine, possessed of amazing powers and a vampiric thirst, who fights to maintain the balance of Order and Chaos on Earth.

MW: Talk to me a little about the cast. Who's there, how do they relate to one another, and what about them (if anything) are you drawing from your own life?

BJ: My Vampirella supporting cast is HUGE, drawing from several different eras of publishing.

Several issues back, Vampirella established a mountain base in Colorado, which she opened as a refuge for scary monsters and super creeps. This is no small task, so she needs plenty of help.

THE SCARLET SISTERS – a small army of God-fearing warrior women, led by Sister Brittany.

PENDRAGON and PANTHA – The magician and the cat goddess have both been loyal recurring cast members over the years.

ADAM VAN HELSING – Vampi's eternal love, he has died and been reborn several times. He now answers directly to God. As issue 38 opens, Adam and Vampi have been estranged for several weeks due to a fundamental disagreement about Vampi's leadership decisions. Adam is really that ideal "good man" that so many of us aspire to be.

LILITH – She's my favorite character in the book besides Vampirella. She's THAT Lilith (crack a book, kids) and happens to be Vampirella's mother. No other character has flip-flopped more between "villain" and "maybe not so much of a villain", but I've had her on the righteous path for quite a while now. I wish I could write an entire series about her; such a great character. #38 opens with Lilith having to reveal a recent deception to her daughter…but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, right?

I've put a lot of my personal emotions into Lilith; she makes it easy to channel that instinctive love that a parent has for a child, but also offers an outlet to show the failures that (in my experience) all parents have to face during their child's life.

CONJURESS, STARPATCH, QUARK, MOTHER BLITZ, and CROUCHBACK – These are the UFO-riding, Moon-headquarters-having, cosmic-level police characters that have helped me expand Vampi's world beyond the Earthly realms, and out into the stars. "Conjuress" is a name that once referred to Lilith; I decided to treat it as a title, and gave the job to someone else. The other four characters are in the book at the suggestion of Kurt Busiek, who will never, ever see enough of my gratitude for the idea of resurrecting them from their only-in-a-few-issues-in-the-60s obscurity. I was already thinking BIG, and I think Kurt could see that when I shared my story ideas with him, but the weirdo alien characters were really the missing piece that I needed to help me express how utterly insane and borderless the world of Vampirella can be.

MW: How do you bridge the gap between superheroic adventure and horror?

BJ: I picked up the book following an excellent 20-issue run by my friend and frequent collaborator, Eric Trautmann. He leaned heavily into the horror-adventure side of things, with Vampirella acting as the Vatican's version of Hellboy. I had written a fill-in issue, and an annual, during his run, so we were in very close contact about his overall story, and that made the handoff pretty seamless. We knew it was happening well in advance, as Eric had recommended me for the gig.

That's a long preface to the actual answer you're looking for: Eric brought the supernatural elements right to the forefront, and I did my best to respect those concepts while revealing larger, more cosmic implications that came as much of a surprise to Vampi as they did the readers. Throughout these stories, Vampirella is always just Vampirella – as much of a superhero as she is a horror character. That makes it easy to have a manic time-travel storyline, and then follow it with a quieter voodoo tale. For me, the perception of Vampirella is more about the context of her surroundings and conflicts; she's always the same character, and there isn't much that can surprise her anymore. She's always going to rise to the occasion.

MW: What is it about Vampi's story that makes you passionate to tell it?

BJ: It's funny: I wouldn't have ever guessed that I'd write Vampirella ONCE, much less be the regular writer for 20+ issues. It's been a while since I turned in the script for this, the final issue, and I still feel a terrible sense of separation anxiety about it. There are so many more stories I'd love to tell with the character, and her supporting cast. I could have done another 100 issues without hesitation.

The amazing thing about Vampirella – for me – is how versatile she is. Like I said earlier, you can put her in a variety of situations, and she's still the same character. Vampirella is an amazing woman who is constantly forced to put aside her own struggles to take up the fight for a race of people (us) that she doesn't actually owe a damn thing to, and that's remarkable to me.

I also love the fact that we now have an era of Vampirella comics that featured a large amount of work from me, and from two of my best friends, Mark Rahner and Eric Trautmann. We all had different takes on Vampi, but they fit together, and make a really nice "big picture." On a personal level, I just can't tell you how cool I think that is.

MW: Fill in the blanks for me: If you're a fan of ____________ and _____________, you will really like VAMPIRELLA.

BJ: I'll be lofty and say "the wide-open adventure possibilities of comic storytelling", and "70's sci-fi and creature feature movie shows."