Things have been better for Katie. Her mother and brother turned into monsters and she was forced to kill them. Now she’s in the midst of a Glarkian space vampire invasion that is destroying the city. It’s already taken out her comic book store / home. Fortunately, help is on the way in the form of the Intergalactic League of Vampblades. That changes things quite a bit.

I’m a huge Green Lantern fan, so the idea of a corps of Vampblades patrolling the galaxy is pretty awesome. While they all have similar abilities, they each have a unique costume, albeit still involving black leather and chains. They arrive as a literal beacon of light from the heavens and proceed to immediately kick some ass. Artist Marco Maccagni showcases these new characters in a couple of full-page spreads as they gleefully jump into the action, slicing up Glarkians left and right.

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The one downside to this is how Katie is treated by the League. They all look down on her because she’s a rookie and doesn’t know the full extent of her powers. This is kind of messed up because she hasn’t had any real guidance since she picked up the blades to begin with. If there was an instruction manual, that would have been pretty helpful before everyone she knew and loved was brutally murdered by space vampires.

We learn more about the Vampblade mythos in this issue than we have in the entire series to date. On the one hand, this is pretty cool, but on the other, it makes me wonder what we’ve been doing up until now. If this League has been out there the whole time and if the Glarkians were such a problem on Earth, you’d think they would have been alerted to what was going on here a while back.

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Katie takes this all in stride. She is initially annoyed, but then recognizes that she still has to save the city and jumps into action. Maccagni’s artwork has an energy to it that really comes out in his characters. They’re over-expressive and on the verge of being cartoonish, but always in a good way. It’s like their every emotion is amplified, especially if it’s a thirst for sweet Glarkian blood.

Speaking of the space vampires, they always look rather phallic. The larger ones terrorizing the city are even more so. This group of women from all over the galaxy come together to fight giant, purple space dicks. If you can get over that, Vampblade is a pretty fun comic.

The scope of Vampblade is greatly expanded with this issue. It takes the character to a whole new level and opens the door for a ton of exciting story possibilities. It’s full of badass beautiful women slicing and dicing their way through an alien invasion.