Vampirella is a female vampire or vampire-like being, whose adventures have been chronicled in comic book format by a variety of publishers. Initially portrayed as the last survivor of the alien world Drakulon, where blood fulfilled the same ecological niche as water on Earth, she has since been told those memories are false. An alternate theory is that she is the daughter of the demon queen Lilith. Wold Newtwon scholar John A. Small posited "Vampirella" to be an alias of the sometimes friend/sometimes rival of Zorro known as Lady Rawhide (see "Kiss of the Vampire" below), bitten by one of Dracula's victims, a young woman named Carmelita Rodriguez.
From her chronicled adventures Vampirella has had encounters with both the Van Helsing family and Dracula himself, as well as engaging in time travel. She does not appear to suffer from all the disadvantages of other vampires. Sunlight seems to have no effect upon her, for example.
(There are a few references to characters from vampire literature in Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton works - Tarzan Alive mentions the family of Lord Ruthven, and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life mentions a Van Helsing - but Vampirella herself is admitted into the Wold Newton Universe primarily through crossovers. However, John A. Small's article "Kiss of the Vampire" has recieved the high compliment of having been reprinted in Myths for the Modern Age, ed. Win Scott Eckert).
External Links
- Kiss of the Vampire by John A. Small (original version)
- Wikipedia article on Vampirella
- Vampirism in the WNU by Dennis Power
- Vampirella Timeline (Note: This is not a WNU site)