Yes, it’s true: It was announced just last week by researchers at the University of Manchester that if future explorers of the Red Planet, Mars, want to have places to live in, the most useful substance for creating building materials…is their very own blood!
In the article “Blood, Sweat and Tears: Extraterrestrial Regolith Biocomposites with in vivo Binders” (set to appear in the magazine Materials Today Bio), researchers A.D. Roberts, D.R. Whittall, R. Breitling, E. Takano, J.J. Blaker, S. Hay, and N.S. Scrutton outlay how they conducted successful experiments to formulate a concrete variant, combining simulated Martian soil with protein from blood plasma; the results proved that blood could potentially be used as construction material for future Martian settlements.
Question is, who’s going to supply all that blood…?
So why am I talking about blood buildings here at the SWC blog? Well, as any horror-comic fan can tell you, there’s already a planet where blood was vitally important to its inhabitants beyond just coursing through the body: Drakulon, the homeworld of Vampirella, the cosmic vampiress—created by publisher James Warren and sci-fi/horror legend Forrest J Ackerman, and designed by artists Frank Frazetta and Trina Robbins—who traveled to Earth in 1969 from her dying planet in search of adventure, love…and blood!
You can learn all about one of comics’ most famous characters in From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures, Steven A. Roman’s nonfiction history of the queen of the comic book bad girls. In its pages you’ll find:
• A breakdown of every Vampirella story that appeared during her Warren Publishing days from July 1969 to December 1982 (plus a list of the books from Harris Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, and Dark Horse Comics that later reprinted them)
• A checklist of every Warren Era appearance she made, including those in other Warren magazines
• A look at the six-book novelization series written by sci-fi and pulp-adventure author Ron Goulart that was published by Warner Books in the 1970s
• An examination of the awful 1996 movie that starred Talisa Soto of the Mortal Kombat movies as Vampi and featured a scenery-gulping performance from rock-god Roger Daltrey as Dracula
• And an extensive look at the history and behind-the-scenes drama of Hammer Films’ Vampirella movie, announced in 1975 with model/actress Barbara Leigh and Hammer legend Peter Cushing as its stars, but which was never produced.
Plusit contains little-seen photos and other material pulled straight from the vaults of the Ackermonster by the Official Vampirella Historian, Sean Fernald, who also wrote the foreword.
From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures is available in print and digital editions. Visit its product page for ordering information. It’ll give you something to read while you’re waiting for those blood bricks you’ve been mixing to harden!
