Hello fiends, today I will review the first issue of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark from Dynamite Comics. A bit of history first. This is Elvira's third comic book series. The first series, called Elvira'a House of Mystery, came from DC in 1986. The second Elvira comic, also called Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, came in 1993 from Claypool Comics. As an aside, in 1988, Marvel put out an Elvira magazine of the same name. If you love Elvira like I do, they are all worth picking up!
On to the review.
This latest Elvira series is written by David Avallone, drawn by David Acosta and colored by Andrew Covalt. The story begins with Elvira being stalked by a vampire who attacks while screaming, "I will eat you alive!". Elvira responds, in typical fashion, with "Promises, promises." Classic Elvira, love it. As the vampire attempts to bite her, his teeth fall out, and the reader realizes that Elvira is on the set of a movie. The director of the movie is Floyd Mankoff, a nod to Lloyd Kaufman of Troma Entertainment. The director even resembles him. As Elvira goes back to her movie star trailer for a break, she quickly discovers a coffin that, not too surprisingly, is a gateway to another dimension. As you may have guessed, she is pushed into the gateway by a mysterious hand. Even as she falls into the space-time vortex, Elvira's witty/smart mouth continues. God I love this woman ….
Elvira soon finds herself in a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva and in the presence of (1) Lord Baron, (2) Percy Shelly and none other than (3) Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, who will eventually write the Frankenstein novel. Elvira conveniently arrives as they are telling ghost stories. She decides to hang with this eclectic group until they come across a "monster man" who wants to make Elvira and Mary his brides. While maintaining her knack for quit-wit and sarcasm, Elvira helps them escape. During the escape, Elvira breaks the reader wall by asking "which variant cover did you pick-up?" (There were 6 different ones, btw) I enjoyed this bit of Deadpool inspiration personally.
Elvira and Mary eventually dispose of the "monster man" by forcing him into the coffin gateway where he ends up Satan knows where. During the struggle, however, Elvira is once again sucked into the coffin. As she fades away, she screams to Ms. Shelly, "Goodbye Mary, I love your books!" Mary's reply "My books?"
The last page has her face to face with Edgar Allen Poe.
David Avallone did an amazing job at capturing her dialogue. I could actually picture her cinematically saying the dialogue while reading it was so on point with her character. The artwork, by Dave Acosta, was pretty amazing as well. He really nailed Elvira's look in my opinion. The colors, however, by Andrew Covalt are what really made this comic book come to life. His color tones from one page to the next evolve with the different time eras and gave the comic a nostalgic B-Movie feel.
I highly recommend this series, especially for the Elvira fans.
I give it a 5/5
This is Alex Sanchez for Horror Web