Jose Gonzalez's Vampirella

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Among horror heroines, Vampirella really stands out to me as something special.

I'm trying to create a horror heroine of my own, in my novel Night Falls on a Fairy Tale, so I've analyzed Vampirella pretty closely, trying to figure out just what the x-factor is that makes her so fascinating and appealing. I believe I've found the answer. Unfortunately, it's almost entirely visual, and therefore of extremely limited usefulness where prose fiction is concerned, but it is quite interesting, so I thought I'd share it here.

What about the costume? It's certainly what catches the eye first, it's a crucially defining feature, and it's an obvious source of appeal. This excellent overview of Vampirella's costume quotes model Barbara Leigh as saying, "to me, Vampirella is her costume." Be that as it may, I don't think the costume, by itself, is the je ne sais quoi I'm looking for. A sexy costume, even one that's interesting and well-designed, only goes so far. Ultimately, a character has to come to life inside it.

I have a theory that the costume actually goes some way toward helping Vampirella come to life for readers. What makes it work, to my mind, is the way it functions as an iconic outline, in the sense elaborated by Scott McCloud in Chapter 2 of Understanding Comics. There, McCloud explains the intensifying power of iconic simplification. In his own words:


McCloud goes on to explain how and why more "cartoony," iconic images tend to absorb us and elicit empathy and identification; he contrasts that with the tendency of more realistic images to strike us as more objective, even alienating:

What's amazing about Vampirella's costume is that its look is strong, sharp, and definitive enough to retain its iconic power almost entirely regardless of how much realistic detail is poured into it. The costume basically nullifies the objectifying, alienating effect of realism illustrated above; even when Vampirella is rendered photo-realistically, the costume continues to lend her that powerful air of iconic simplicity.

To illustrate the importance of this iconic quality, consider another, far less successful horror heroine whose costume doesn't achieve it. Part of Satana's weakness as a horror heroine is that there's no "iconic anchor" to her whole look. She's barely recognizable as the same character in the following three images:



Contrast that, now, with the following three images that are clearly and instantly recognizable as Vampirella:

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Whereas Satana's costume and overall look are cluttered, inconsistent, and confusing, especially as realistic detail is added, Vampirella's are quite durable, retaining their iconic punch across significant variations in style, context, and degree of realism.

That brings us to Jose Gonzalez, because it's precisely what he pours into Vampirella's iconic outline that brings her to such vivid, unforgettable life. Gonzalez is often referred to as the definitive Vampirella artist, and I'd go so far as to say that if all the other artists who tackle the character suffer in comparison, they benefit immensely from the way his version resonates in our collective unconscious.

Superficially, Gonzalez's version seems to stand out because it's so jaw-droppingly beautiful and realistically detailed:

No other Vampirella artist really comes close to matching Gonzalez by these measures.

The beauty he imbues her with is idealized, but very natural in kind. She looks like she could be a particularly stunning model or actress from the '70s. Contrast that with the revoltingly blow-up-doll-ish version rolled out for the Bad Girl boom of the '90s:

Ugh.

As for realistic detail, Gonzalez actually builds up an uncannily lifelike representation in the reader's mind through a number of techniques. One of those, remarkably enough, is the way he ranges all up and down the spectrum of realistic detail and iconic simplification. Sometimes, his Vampirella is damn near photo-realistic:

Sometimes she's quite simple and sketchy:

Most often, she's somewhere in between:

Often, these images seem more detailed than they are simply because the details are so well-chosen and perfectly proportioned.

To see what really brings Gonzalez's Vampirella to life, sets her apart, and makes her special and unique among horror heroines, requires that we look a little deeper. It's his mastery of expression and body language. Essentially, Gonzalez creates for Vampirella a rich, textured, subtle inner life that goes far beyond anything you'll find in any thought balloon, and he conveys it strictly through his art. Following Gonzalez's Vampirella on the page is like watching an actress in a dodgy role with a fair-to-middling script somehow tap into her greatness and give the riveting, breakout performance of a lifetime. Vampirella says some awfully groanworthy and melodramatic stuff, but Gonzalez almost always finds a way to sell it through her posture and expression.

The irony is that he then depicts her as a bad, hammy actress in her stint making B-movies with Pantha.

Gonzalez's mastery is awesome to behold, and I could give examples of it ad infinitum, but I'll just focus on three to make the point.

The first is his solid grasp of faces in profile. To judge from other artists' efforts, drawing a face in profile well must be horrendously challenging:

(Sutton)

(Nebres)

(Mayo)

(Small)

(Stinsman)

My impression (based on an unscientific but fairly careful survey of a stack of comics relevant to this post) is that artists generally avoid profile shots, preferring to draw characters, especially female characters, at other angles or straight-on.

By contrast, Gonzalez renders Vampirella in profile often. Given the apparent difficulty in just making a character's face even vaguely and consistently recognizable, he conveys an astonishing range, complexity, and subtlety of feeling, to beautiful effect:






I could go on and on, but I trust you get the idea.

A second facet of Gonzalez's wondrously expressive art is his skill in tracing subtle shifts in mood and feeling over a sequence of panels.

These three panels depict a few seconds of conversation. In the first panel, almost a straight-on shot, Vampirella is looking up attentively at the speaker and her shoulders are slightly hunched. The next panel switches to a profile-view, emphasizing two subtle changes--as she enters the conversation, she tilts her head almost imperceptibly forward and demurely lowers her lashes. It also introduces her interlocutor into the frame as an objective presence. The third panel returns to a straight-on shot, but one that's significantly different from the first. Whereas the first was more objective and distant, this one puts us much more subjectively into her headspace. She's not looking at her interlocutor any more, even though he's now visually crowding into the frame as obtrusively as he's conversationally imposing on her. Not only has the direction of her gaze shifted, but her eyes have lost some focus as she thinks. Her shoulders have gone from slightly hunched to slightly slumped, also indicative of her turn inward. All of this clearly conveys some very fine-grained fluctuations in Vampirella's mood, thoughts, and feelings.

I've focused so far on Gonzalez's mastery of facial expression, but he displays an equal facility for body language.

In the page above, we see a conversation in which Vampirella shifts her posture five times (once per panel) to varying degrees. Each shift seems entirely natural, and expresses a nuanced emotional change in reaction to Adam's words or what she herself is saying. We actually only see one full-length shot, and only two more that show her upper body, but even the tight head shot suggests its own motion and posture, meaningfully distinct from all the others.

The third example I'd like to highlight is almost invisible unless you look for it. Gonzalez demonstrates a brilliant sense of personal space--how it reflects relationships and plays out in interactions. We see that to some extent in both illustrations I've used for the preceding point.

Here's about as explicit an illustration of it as we're likely to find. What I love about this page is the contrast between Pendragon's greeting hugs for Vampirella and Pantha, subtly yet clearly reflecting the different levels of comfort and closeness he feels with them through eye-contact and how straight-on or sideways the hug is. These are the kinds of little touches that, panel by panel, page by page, issue by issue, year in and year out, add up to a sense of real personality and life in these characters.

In conclusion, this is what makes Vampirella special: Gonzalez imbues her with a soul. Working only with her visible outward appearance, he animates her with an inner life rich, deep, and appealing enough to far transcend the limits of her scripted thoughts, words, and actions.