Vampirella Helliday 2025 Special - Comic Review

Dynamite Entertainment gives us another Vampirella Christmas special directly following Vampirella Helliday Special 2024, this 2025 edition is also written by Frank Tieri and features art by Mariano Benitez Chapo.

After Vampirella left Christmas suspended a year ago, the Council of Holidays pays a little visit to the former resident of Drakulon. Turns out, the holiday representatives aren't trying to harm Vampirella but they are going to take her to the other holidays so Christmas can resume, since the lack of a heavy holiday puts too much weight on the rest. Vampirella agrees to save Christmas and goes on a search for a now stripper Santa to seize the North Pole and take back Christmas Town.

Again with the delirious and crude racy humor, this enjoyable little piece of holiday parody turns violent and hilarious with ease, making it a digestible and more than serviceable experience for those who already had a good time with the previous entry. Inventive with the same old concept of nasty holidays and Christmas, it never overstays its welcome and actually delivers quite fast on the raunchy and silly situations or gags you wanna see, a favorite is people referring to Vampirella as a "vampire hooker."

Recommended for Vampirella fans and those looking for a nice Christmas special, you don't even need to read the past issue.

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Vampirella Helliday Special (2024) Comic Review

This new Vampirella Christmas Special was written by Frank Tieri (several Deadpool comics, Red Sonja comics, Vampironica New Blood) and illustrated by Mariano Benitez Chapo (Savage Tales 2022) and Pasquale Qualano (Hell Sonja, Samurai Sonja, Gargoyles Quest, Harley Quinn Road Trip Special).

First we see Vampirella arrive at a house just in time to save some kids from an evil, bloodthirsty Santa Claus with fangs. We are introduced to the narrator: Snowman Steve, who tells the story of how this came to be. Elves and workers at Santa's workshop have been dying recently, a vampire is the prime suspect. However, Ms. Claus doesn't believe it. Vampirella is then called in to stop the newly vampiric Santa Claus once and for all.

It's a hilarious and irreverent Christmas satire, it hits all the expected bits (Santa's workshop being exploitive, Santa being sleazy with a bad marriage) but executes the jokes with such good writing that it makes them refreshing once more. Some quick and witty humor, sometimes with references but never to an annoying degree.It's short but charismatic, Vampirella is her usual cheeky self and causes a lot of carnage. 

It's a clever and well done alternative Christmas special that its audience can appreciate. If you like Vampirella, you can get this one and have a good time. 

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Red Sonja: Holiday Special (2018) Comic Review

Here we have a very peculiar comic book Holiday Special featuring one of the toughest redheads in fantasy: Red Sonja. A one-off special from 2018 featuring two stories. Illustrated by Ricardo Jaime (Crackdown, Godslap), written by Erik Burnham (Lady Hel, several works with the TMNT, Ghostbusters and Red Sonja) and Amy Chu (Ana and the Cosmic Race and several Red Sonja issues).

Sonja travels through a snowstorm and finds an unknown cloaked woman who reminds her of a place she visited previously. She tells her the story of her time in our modern civilization, traveling throughout New York City with Max and getting a taste of Christmas, the most human celebration.

Then they find a man in a Santa costume running from mobsters, Sonja predictably takes them out without much effort, but the trio flees when the goons take out their guns. The guy in the Santa costume is finally safe and the goons lose them among the crowd at a Christmas celebration.

It's a funny story that plays with the usual "fish out of water" gags and dynamic whenever Sonja is taken out of her realm and inserted in New York City or something. Not a horrible one-off but it's also far from a highly memorable one. The resolution was done a bit too quickly and too easily but you can forgive it because of the time and space constraints. I think it's perfectly fine for Sonja fans, as it is short and sweet.

The second story isn't christmas related but it's drawn in a very retro style and looks quite wonderful, so I don't recommend you skip it, we might look at it some other time.