The Story So Far
Vanya, Serah, Niya, and Guy are four soldiers from the future trapped in the prehistoric past, surviving against dinosaurs, savage humanoids, and the Torridians, a race of warrior aliens hellbent on conquering humanity. Their adventures have taken them across the jungle primeval, and they are eventually captured by the Bone Tribe, a cult of barbarians that Niya was a part of, who engage in sexual rituals in order to hatch a Torridian Dragon. The Bone Tribe outfit Serah and Guy with cranial implants that link them to a network shared by the cybernetic dinosaurs unleashed by the Torridians. The four eventually make their escape from the Bone Tribe and part different ways: Vanya and Serah trek to one of humanity’s outposts while Niya and Guy attempt to hide the Torridian Dragon Eggs they absconded with.
Issue 07 Plot
Looks can the deceiving as it turns out the war being raged by the Torridians is not going well. There is a plague that has decimated the Torridian numbers, pushing General Tora into making a hasty decision to press on the attack, bolstered by their cybernetically outfitted dinosaurs.
At Terran Base Alpha, Serah, still receiving visions from her implant due to it being connected to a network of dinosaurs and savages, recovers in an infirmary. The alien Relo Quarr, a combat strategist, informs Vanya about the Torridian plague and the Torridian Dragons.
Niya and Guy are apprehended by Elah and the Astral Guard who also have an interest in the Torridian Dragon eggs. Their efforts to retrieve the eggs that Niya had hidden are thwarted by the Witch of the Bone Tribe, who seeks to fulfill a prophecy that will allow her to ascend to becoming a powerful queen while an intergalactic war rages about.
Commentary
The transition from issue six to issue seven of Vanya is jarring to say the least as there are multiple jump cuts in the plot.
The first huge leap is the Torridian plague that has, as one of General Tora’s subordinates states, reduced their attacking force to a third of its size. All the prior issues of Vanya have shown the Torridians decimating the humans, and out of the blue, one page into issue seven, it turns out the Torridians are actually the ones being wiped out. It is a War of the Worlds type situation going on. It is not unwelcomed in the narrative at all, it just so suddenly pops up into the narrative.
The second leap involves Vanya and Serah who are at a titanic military base called Terran Base Alpha. In the prior issue, the last panel that featured Vanya and Serah show them walking through the jungle, passing by a giant alligator snapping the neck of a dinosaur, as they make their way to Outpost Nine. Issue seven fast forwards to Serah in an infirmary, with Vanya chatting with the newly introduced Quarr. It feels like there is a bit of retconning going on (Outpost Nine to Terran Base Alpha) and that a chunk of story is missing. Even if the rest of Vanya and Serah’s journey to the outpost was uneventful, there is a transition that feels missing.
Once readers can get their bearings straight on both of those narrative threads, issue seven begins to make the bigger picture of the Vanya comic as a whole much more cohesive. Motivations are made more overt on why characters are doing what they are doing, but also in the process, using the prophecy of the Witch from the Bone Tribe sets it up so that all the major players of the comic (Vanya and company, the Astral Guard, the Torridians, the Bone Tribe members, and so on) can begin to converge. The Vanya series started with a fun, albeit shotgun approach of tossing all these genre ingredients (time travel, space travel, dinosaurs, jungle women, robots, lots of sexploitation, etc.) into the story cauldron. Issue seven is doing the heavy lifting at glueing everything together.
As predicted in issue six, the Astral Guard are just bluster. Elah tries to project an aura of superiority over the captured Niya and Guy, but in her over confidence she is easily fooled. She and her Astral Guard (which are supposed to be the best of the best of the best, the very same elite school of soldiers Vanya was training to be) are led right into an exploding trap while looking for the Torridian Dragon eggs. The explosive trap that Niya placed in the prior issue going off does raise an eyebrow as Niya is also hurt in the process. Did she forget about the trap? Did she try to lead the Astral Guard to the trap so she and Guy could escape, and she underestimated its blast radius? Did the Bone Tribe Witch move the explosive, which is why everyone got hurt by it? Regardless, the high-tech Astral Guard, who are escorting two prisoners who they deem as deserters and probably untrustworthy, who *should* be hyperaware of everything around them in the hostile, primitive world, are easily dispatched by Niya’s (the Witch’s) trap. If it was not for the aforementioned plague, the Torridans could have laid waste to humanity as the Astral Guard have been lackluster at responding to their force.
The Bone Tribe Witch coming back as a major antagonist is a delight. She appears much more formidable, scheming, and that she has it together – composed. She has a trio of sabretooth tigers with her that are under her control, which does introduce an interesting alternative perspective to prior events in the story. Back in issue two there is a sabretooth tiger stalking Vanya and company, who reappears with companions in issue five and attacks the Bone Tribe, providing a deus ex machina for Vanya to escape. This initial take away may not actually have been the case. Instead, it could have been the Bone Tribe Witch from the beginning, using her network of sabretooth tigers to monitor the world (and thus end up keeping tabs on Vanya), and it was not a stalking cat that chose to attack the Bone Tribe in its pursuit of Vanya, but that it was actually at the bidding of the Bone Tribe Witch to usurp the Bone King. If this turns out to be the case, that is a major bravo reveal. And if not, well, The Bone Tribe Witch is still a commanding character, much more so than Elah or General Tora.
Finally, issue seven does introduce a new character, the alien Relo Quarr. Previously the interstellar conflict seemed to be humans vs. the Torridians, but Quarr mentions the Galactic Alliance, which places the Vanya series more in a Star Trek Federation vs. Klingons type setup. Quarr himself looks like a combination of a Lord of the Rings elf and a Turian from the Mass Effect series of games. In other words, he looks pretty cool. But not nearly as cool as the final panel of the issue that finally reveals a Torridian Dragon that looks straight up like a sinister Balrog from LOTR.
Covers and Swag Impressions
The Kickstarter for issue seven of Vanya was concluded in April of 2024, with physical orders shipping in October later that year. Cover-wise, there are eleven different covers, some only obtainable as an add on. The covers all have a mix-mash of non-nude covers, topless-only, all nude, holofoil, and metal variants. All told there are thirty different cover incarnations.
Sean Joyce returns from issue six to do the standard cover for issue seven, bringing his sword and sorcery style with him. There is a gothic quality to Joyce’s cover, as Vanya stands, spear in hand, against the night sky, with a full moon and silhouettes of pterodactyls fly about. Replace the volcano with a castle and the flying reptiles with bats, and this cover oozes gothic sentiments.
The best cover of issue seven goes to Aleriia V who depicts the most vibrant Vanya yet. V’s Vanya goes all in on the jungle girl cheesecake style but executes them in a way that gives the cover art an oil painting-like quality. The cover shows Vanya bathing in a waterfall and makes it a great companion piece to the Bruno Sousa / Tommy Shelton cover for issue three which also shows a bathing Vanya.
Vanya issue seven is the first time the series has branched out and done cosplay covers, with pinup model Alaina Rose Lee gracing a set of four covers available as an add-on set [NOTE: Alaina Rose Lee was featured in the inaugural issue of Bachelor Pad’s “Nylon Nightcap” series. My write up about that issue can be read here]. Other pictures from the Alaina/Vanya photoshoot became prints as part of the issue’s Kickstarter swag.
The final bit of swag for issue seven (unless one contributed over $50 in which they also received a sticker set) is an advert for Bad Bug’s Xenogeist series and a Vanya tarot card. These tarot cards have been neat to receive, and hopefully Bad Bug makes an actual tarot deck available in the future. The tarot card for this issue is for The Hanged Man. It shows Vanya swinging on a vine, with a blue-scaled tyrannosaur behind here, and an exploding volcano in the distance. The art on this card does match the name of the card, with Vanya hanging from a vine (the Rider-Waite shows a man hanging upside down from a tree).
Conclusion
Despite having to orient oneself with some jarring jump cuts between issue six and this one, issue seven is a quintessential issue in the Vanya story. The introduction of the Torridian plague, the reveal of the Torridian Dragon, and the arrival of a competent villain (the Bone Tribe Witch) and beefer human allies (Quarr), it looks that the Vanya series is trying to rebalance itself. This is going to become critical because future issues are going to have to juggle a huge conflict with lots of moving pieces if the Witch’s prophecy comes to fruition. It is going to be exciting.
For more information on Vanya and the comic’s creative team, check out the links below:
- Bad Bug Media Vanya 07 Product Page
- Vanya 07 Kickstarter Page
- Zoran Jovicic (Illustrator)
- Mike Tener (Writer / EIC Bad Bug)
- John Macleod (Editor)
- Sean Joyce (Standard Issue Cover Artist)
- Aleriia V (Cover Artist)
- Bryan Magnaye (Colorist)
- Alaina Rose Lee (Cosplayer)
Also, consider checking out the reviews I’ve done of other titles published by Bad Bug: