Varney The Vampyre

A historic, romantic, erotic, horror comic strip graphic novel series in 14 chapters

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By Vlad Quigley
(Story, pencil art, inked art, colours)

Vlad Quigley is professional artist based in London, England. For over 20 years, Quigley has created gothic comics, worked with the world's most famous celebrity models and exhibited internationally. In addition, Quigley is listed in Who's Who in Art and the Royal Edition of the Cambridge Biographical Dictionary.

Varney the Vampyre is inspired by the Victorian Penny Dreadful, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula by 30 years. A very British vampire, Varney traces his ancestory to the ancient English legend of Croglin Grange (predating the Transylvanian legends).

Quigley has condensed the original 232 Penny Dreadful chapters, extensively rewriting the tale into 14 all-new self-contained chapters that build to tell a complete story that has taken two decades to research and write.

Truly a labour of love, the tale follows Varney's tender, passionate love for Lady Flora Bannerworth and features some of the most sensual dialogue in literature.

The art is a lavish, lovingly-researched, detailed experience... said to be of a quality rarely seen in illustration.

The all-important Lady Flora is portrayed in the art by world famous actress and model Jessica Jaymes.

Set in the Baroque England of the early 1700s, Varney the Vampyre covers many of the important events and issues of the 17th Century... especially the English Civil War... as well as explorations of poverty, slavery, politics, sanitation, crime, medicine, genocide, theatre, alcohol, philosophy, superstition, prostitution, geology, transport, deference, mob violence... much of which parallels life in the 21st Century. Little has changed in 400 years and the warnings from history are clear.

The tale's use of Old English language has been researched extensively by Quigley to hold true of that time period. Inspired by such works from Aphra Behn, Ben Jonson, King Charles I, Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan, John Dryden, Freeborn John Lilburne, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Oliver Cromwell, etc. as well as contemporary legal documents and personal accounts. An intention of Varney the Vampyre is to give readers a uniquely all-encompassing authentic sociological feel of that age and to learn more about our own times as a result.

Quigley's Varney the Vampyre is truly a unique form of literature that combines modern and ancient forms of sequential storytelling. Complementing the more conventional comic strip approach of narrative, the story can also be read via the medium of Tarot Cards. All 78 cards of the traditional Tarot deck appear portraying insights into the archetypal characters. Other layers of symbolism are provided by alchemy, Voodoo, astrology, numerology, Kabala, shamanism, Buddhism, Native American, physiology, Hinduism, colour, sensation, mythology, etc.

Varney the Vampyre will begin serialisation in US horror comic magazine Carnopolis in 2006.