VAMPS
Written by: Elaine Lee
Art by: William Simpson
Colours by: Stuart Chaifetz
Lettering by: Clem Robins
Vertigo Comics, 1994
Vampires have always been about sex. You’ll see articles popping up from time to time questioning this fact, or trying to blame the phenomenon on Twilight, or Buffy, or Anne Rice, and the list goes on. But the fact is that since they captured the popular imagination, they’ve been closely tied to sex. Looking back at modern vampires’ fictional origins, from Polidori’s mysterious but alluring Lord Ruthven, to Le Fanu’s dangerously queer Carmilla, to the granddaddy of them all, Stoker’s Dracula, it’s clear that the vampire has been a sexual predator since it first showed up in popular Western literature. It doesn’t take a second-wave feminist to see the sexual symbolism in the act of penetration by which a vampire feeds and reproduces, tying hunger and lust together in one monstrous appetite.
Stoker’s overwhelming influence on the genre has meant that his fear of women’s sexuality has become an essential part of vampire stories in the eyes of many — how many movies feature buxom and sparsely-clad vampires attacking or even dying, screaming and writhing in an imitation of orgasmic ecstasy? Elaine Lee, in the afterword to the collection of VAMPS, bluntly describes vampire fiction as “rape fantasy without guilt.” Her miniseries, co-created with artist Will Simpson, makes use of the historic ties between vampirism and sexual appetite, subverting the usual gender dynamics that find women only in the role of victim. “Whether they feed upon the same sex or the opposite, male vampires are allowed their deadly hunger and are loved all the more for it,” Lee observes. “Female vampires must be punished.” VAMPS, in contrast, is a story of female empowerment and companionship. It’s easy to see why original responses to the series were mixed (especially from men, Lee notes), some accusing the series of misandry while accused it of violent misogyny, as it portrays its female vampires as unapologetic monsters. The Vamps love what they do, and the series concludes with protagonist Howler rejecting the last vestiges of her humanity to ride with her vampire sisters, to go out and continue committing nightly acts of murder.
I’m surprised this comic isn’t more popular today — aspects of it haven’t aged well (including its views on sex work and its dialogue for Latina character Whipsnake), but overall it’s about women supporting each other and bucking expectations for how they should behave. The series opens with the Vamps teaming up to take down their master, Dave. With Dave dead, Howler assumes leadership of the gang, leading them in a cross-country roadtrip to take revenge against the men who took her son away from her when she was still alive. Hank (a cop) eventually scents their trail and teams up with Howler’s still-living twin sister, Jenn, to track the Vamps down. Hank proves to be the least of their worries when Dave is resurrected. The Vamps have to avoid him while Howler goes off on her own to find her son.
The story is mostly told from the perspective of Howler, who fled her family as a young woman, ended up in Vegas, where she earned a living through sex work, having a son with an unknown father. Dave found her at her lowest, alcoholic, unemployed, and after her son was taken away by Child Services. He offered her the power to take revenge on the men who wronged her, and it’s safe to assume that Dave also found the other Vamps at their most vulnerable. Dave’s dialogue is peppered with terrible puns and gendered slurs, the kind of man who calls women “females” and is firm in his belief that his “brides” will be pliant and obedient, hunting prey for him to devour. While we don’t get their full histories, we can imagine the other Vamps accepting Dave’s offer of immortal life as an alternative to lives that seem stifling, hopeless, or boring. Whipsnake, growing up in Washington Heights and working for her father who “treated [her] like the boy he wished [she] was,” fell for Dave when he offered her the chance to leave her neighbourhood and see the world. The others’ lives are more open to interpretation; Skeeter is an easygoing Southern Belle who still longs to be loved by the men she feeds on; Mink is a “would-be movie star” who enjoys the finer things in life, like a good spray tan and “just the right dress”; Screech is an artist and computer whiz who’s easily read as queer – she believes that “guys are only good for one thing,” her pragmatic murder of a man in one scene at odds with her gentler feeding on a woman, whom she doesn’t kill. The group seems comfortable operating on the fringes of society, touring small-town America and choosing to stop feeding on biker gangs, since they feel like a part of that community.
The other major woman in the book, Howler’s twin sister Jenn, is plagued by visions of Howler’s actions and wants to track her sister down. She is medically unable to have children and wants to raise her nephew as her own, so she and Howler track the boy down to a rich but abusive home. Dave conveniently shows up at the same time and is killed for good this time when the Vamps arrive. Jenn escapes with Tommy, abandoning Hank the boring cop, who is left tied to a chair. Howler, who knows that she can’t raise her son as a vampire, gratefully hands Tommy over to Jenn, and threatens to kill Hank if he ever tries to find her sister and son. The series opens with women working together to liberate themselves and ends with them feeling truly free. The last image of a man in the comic is Hank impotently screaming after the vampires, weakly vowing to track them down. It’s truly beautiful.
While they’re sympathetic, the comic never tries to sugar-coat the Vamps as anything less than monstrous. They must feed every night before crawling into the dirt to sleep the day away, and the series is as bloody as any horror fan could want. Simpson’s art might feel a bit dated to modern readers, particularly with Chaifetz’s colours that often choose expression over realism (and therefore can be a bit inconsistent, most noticeably in Whipsnake’s skin colour). Still, the grittiness of his style works well for a vampire story, where the Vamps are sexy and alluring, but with permanently clawed hands, and monstrous faces when they attack. They’re often appealingly sensual and voluptuous in one panel, and unsettling in the next, with enormous fangs and too-wide mouths under plump lips, and pupil-less red eyes beneath angular, animalistic brows. Simpson blends beauty with horror, visually demonstrating the compelling contradiction of the vampire.
Even their less-murderous behaviour would be enough to render them monstrous to someone like Bram Stoker; they show their anger, they get violent, they enjoy sex. But this comic celebrates their ‘unladylike’ behaviour. Daves dies (the first time) screaming that they’re “bitches” for betraying him, and Howler tells him that the definition of a bitch is “some gal who ain’t takin’ shit” from men like Dave. Moments like this one, or when Whipsnake later kills a man who shoots her while hurling the same gendered slurs, show the true soul of VAMPS: a violent revenge fantasy. At the centre of the narrative, Howler rages against the system that took her child away, killing every man involved with the decision, but ultimately exchanges her role as mother for a life of bloody hedonism, a decision that the comic celebrates. It makes it clear that as a vampire, Howler has to leave her old life behind; we don’t even learn her human name until the 5th issue. It’s also clear that Howler is more at home with her vampire sisters than with her human one, since she nearly meets her death after abandoning the other Vamps in her quest to find her son. Luckily, the Vamps show up just in time to kill Dave (for good this time). The Vamps rely on each other even in their everyday existence, unable to feed on their own. In a scene that will look familiar to most women, Howler is essentially drunk after feeding, and the other Vamps ask her if she’s okay to ride before the flee the scene, keeping an eye on her to make sure she isn’t left behind. They may be monsters, but the Vamps are still recognizably human.
Part of the appeal of monsters, especially those who pass for human, can be their ability to act out our darkest fantasies. The Vamps take small revenge against patriarchal society by killing the man who killed them, and feeding on “men who would be meals,” like a guy wearing a shirt proclaiming him as a “true connoisseur of sleazy women and cheap booze.” Howler’s “friends take off to feed on human blood… while [she goes] hunting for some real monsters,” that is, men whose unquestioned status can harm people with less institutional power. Lee sets most of the series in blue collar America, and there’s definite contrast between how the Vamps interact with their victims in wealthy Las Vegas and in less-affluent areas. They lure men to private locations in Vegas, rather than killing them behind a packed bar or in a street, and when they’re attacked by a gang in Washington Heights, they don’t even bother to kill to cover their tracks. Toxic “machismo” will prevent men from admitting that they were beat up by women, and cops wouldn’t be of much help in the crime-ridden neighbourhood anyway. They know how the game is played, and their savvy keeps the Vamps alive.
And refreshingly, they all stay alive — none of the characters needs to sacrifice herself or undergo any undue trauma; they’re never punished for rejecting (or conforming to) gendered norms, or for their more clearly monstrous actions. Even Jenn, still human, tells the Vamps to kill her lover Hank when he tries to stop her from fleeing with her nephew. Hank’s main purpose in the narrative seems to be to set up a nice nuclear family for Tommy, but Lee subverts that trope in the final pages. Jenn’s choice to be a single mom, like her twin’s abandoning motherhood entirely, is a triumph.
VAMPS is filled with subverted expectations, while still giving fans all of the vampire sex and violence they could want. In her afterword, Lee says that she “wanted to do a modern vampire story, with characters who were like [her]” and her friends. Overall, it feels like a story written by (and for) women, with characters who may antagonize each other sometimes (Whipsnake hates Skeeter’s constant singing), but ultimately care for and about each other. In the first issue, Howler announces the series’ intentions when she proclaims “sisterhood is powerful!” The Vamps are sexy without being overly sexualized, women who enjoy sex and feeling sexy without being demonized for it. They’re vampires at their most appealing: by killing Dave and reclaiming their autonomy, they give each other the chance to finally reinvent themselves, to live the lives they choose.
