Pixie Trix Comix & Hiveworks Community

You might still be able to get a flavour for the story by reading the forum but other than that I think the only way to get a proper taster of the series now is to buy it from the new hosting site. You can see some pages by googling "Vampire Cheerleaders" and checking out the images and that might give you an idea whether you'd like it or not.

Although I read it all and bought all the books, because of the way the story ended up I hesitate to recommend it. I enjoyed both the VC and PMS parts of the story but there were some people who were much more taken with one side than the other. And because of the controversy in my opinion it never quite delivered on its promise. There was also an artist change part way through which some people, but not many, found a bit off putting.

The humour was very dark but became much more broad and obvious in the last arc "Adventures in Time and Space". So it started out subtle but by the end was so slapstick that it was almost hitting you over the head with an anvil.

If you see the books second hand or on sale it might be worth a risk buying them but other than that I'd say try to check it out first somehow before putting any money down.

dmra wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 25, 2018 4:21 pm

You might still be able to get a flavour for the story by reading the forum but other than that I think the only way to get a proper taster of the series now is to buy it from the new hosting site. You can see some pages by googling "Vampire Cheerleaders" and checking out the images and that might give you an idea whether you'd like it or not.

Although I read it all and bought all the books, because of the way the story ended up I hesitate to recommend it. I enjoyed both the VC and PMS parts of the story but there were some people who were much more taken with one side than the other. And because of the controversy in my opinion it never quite delivered on its promise. There was also an artist change part way through which some people, but not many, found a bit off putting.

The humour was very dark but became much more broad and obvious in the last are "Adventures in Time and Space". So it started out subtle but by the end was so slapstick that it was almost hitting you over the head with an anvil.

If you see the books second hand or on sale it might be worth a risk buying them but other than that I'd say try to check it out first somehow before putting any money down.

Thanks for the thorough review. I am not too into dark humor, so I think I'll pass on the series, unless, like you suggested, I am able to find it inexpensively.

@Dark Ash: If you want to glimpse how heated the VC forums could get, click here and read from that post onward. But according to Addam (the writer for VC/PMS) it was worse on Facebook.

Fairy Glade's Fairy wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 25, 2018 2:43 am

hey, since you are at it, tell us that anime characters look Caucasian and that the huge eyes & pastel hair are an attempt to imitate Western people, why dontcha? I bet you can find lotsa American papers & media articles to support you, ROTFL!

This is a joke or is for real?
There really are guys like that out there? Who claim that Japanese animators draw their cartoon characters to look like whiteys?

Rosa wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 25, 2018 6:59 pm

Fairy Glade's Fairy wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 25, 2018 2:43 am

hey, since you are at it, tell us that anime characters look Caucasian and that the huge eyes & pastel hair are an attempt to imitate Western people, why dontcha? I bet you can find lotsa American papers & media articles to support you, ROTFL!

This is a joke or is for real?
There really are guys like that out there? Who claim that Japanese animators draw their cartoon characters to look like whiteys?

I can't remember where I read it, but I recalling hearing that the grandfather of anime got the ideaforf giant eyes from Disney duck comics, specifically those drawn by Carl Barks. I don't know how accurate that is, but as a Carl Barks fan I liked that idea.

Oh boy, do I even want to see what argument occurred this time?


Honestly it's a shame what happened to VC. I liked both the VC and PMS teams so I didn't really have any objection to one of them being "secondary" so long as they received enough attention. A shame criticism on Facebook is taken seriously(People are morons on there, there's countless evidence regarding that). I imagine the ending would have been more satisfying if things didn't end up the way they did.

DarkAsh wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 25, 2018 7:14 pm

I can't remember where I read it, but I recalling hearing that the grandfather of anime got the idea for giant eyes from Disney duck comics, specifically those drawn by Carl Barks. I don't know how accurate that is, but as a Carl Barks fan I liked that idea.

No! You a fan too!???
Omg, I'm like a super ultra mega fan of Carl Barks!!! I have read all of his Duck family stories! The guy was a genius, his writing was incredible (you rarely see such mastery of the English language even in prize-winning novelists) and his art was beautiful and also was the real thing: he truly recreated his settings and backgrounds with extreme attention to detail and realism, like the old Dutch look in his New England towns like Duckburg, Pumpkinburg, etc. He was a whole level, no, two or three whole levels over any other writer/artist working for Disney at his time! All hail and worship!!!

I remember I read myself at some time, long time ago, that Disney-style art was the inspiration for the style of the first manga artists, which is why they created super-big-eyed characters with impossibly overexpressive faces just like in Disney. I didn't know that, among the Disney artists, Carl Barks was specifically a special influence on them... but I love-love-love the idea to bits and therefore, from now on, I will officially adopt it as established and unquestionable truth, so there.

And, of course, when about Disney, we are talking about humanoid animals with animal faces: ducks, ganders, dogs, mouses, cows and so on. It'd be completely absurd to tell that Donald Duck, or Mickey Mouse, have a Caucasian face. In point of fact, the Disney style can be carried over to whatever setting and racial context you want to, and it's self-evident that manga and anime characters were always supposed to look Japanese in the eyes of the authors and their audience. Well, that's how I see it anyway.

That's why it seems like a joke that there'd be people in media or academia claiming that the characters in Japanese anime look like Caucasian whiteys. I kinda suspect that FGF was joking, or making fun of the guy she replied to.

sigh, no, I'm not joking... there really are lots of people in "media & academia" (as you say) who have wrote articles & papers on that subject.... saying that the Japanese are self-hating losers who all secretly wanna be Caucasian... I wasn't exaggerating...

to prove their crazy disgusting theory they come up with all sorts of meaningless baloney... like how, these days, most young men & women in Japan dye their hair shades of brown or blond (snort)... or how anime characters, according to them, are all pure white race Caucasians...
lemme give you an example: look at this pic, you may recognize the character:




Notice the fair skin, the blonde hair, the blue eyes?

To those guys, this is a pure Aryan girl that Hitler would approve of!

To me, whoever thinks that is a sicko whose brain has rotten inside his skull...

a close collaborator of Professor Rachel "Matt" Thorn (who is today the greatest West-born expert in manga) made a video, once, on this subject... he claimed it was embarrassing to watch all those guys who should know better (journalists, college graduates) making fools of themselves by repeating that bs about anime people being Caucasian... he made the video to set them straight & make them understand the aesthetic criteria of Japanese animation... someone uploaded the video to Youtube, so if you wanna watch it here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r7NtqjdggI

@Rosa, yes, I am a huge Carl Barks fan. Have been one since '88 when I picked up issue 222 of Uncle Scrooge and read the outstanding story Mysterious Stone Ray. I could not agree more about his writing and art style being better than anyone else working for Western Publishing, and deserved of his honorary title of "The Good Duck Artist".

Are you picking up the reprints from Fantagraphics?

Gotoh wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 25, 2018 3:38 pm

tau neutrino wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 25, 2018 11:48 am

Ironically, the Hartley's in VC seemed to be responsible parents, which got them condemned as abusive by the vampire apologists, even though their parenting style seemed to be similar to the Delacroix's.

How were Heather's parents similar to Maria and Eugene?

We were actually allowed to see Layla and Nina spend enough time with their parents, or scenes of them alone, to form an opinion about them. Whereas we only saw Heather's parents 3-4 times and most of their brief appearances was spent being her thralls.

Both use grounding as punishment, and the mother is the one who takes the lead in disciplining. Both mothers demand their children be polite to others (that was Heather's main complaint), believe in being a parent not a pal, and they both reserve the right to forcibly drag away their misbehaving children. That was the evidence cited for Mrs. Hartley being abusive, although Maria did the same thing.

DarkAsh wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 25, 2018 4:27 pm

dmra wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 25, 2018 4:21 pm

You might still be able to get a flavour for the story by reading the forum but other than that I think the only way to get a proper taster of the series now is to buy it from the new hosting site. You can see some pages by googling "Vampire Cheerleaders" and checking out the images and that might give you an idea whether you'd like it or not.

Although I read it all and bought all the books, because of the way the story ended up I hesitate to recommend it. I enjoyed both the VC and PMS parts of the story but there were some people who were much more taken with one side than the other. And because of the controversy in my opinion it never quite delivered on its promise. There was also an artist change part way through which some people, but not many, found a bit off putting.

The humour was very dark but became much more broad and obvious in the last are "Adventures in Time and Space". So it started out subtle but by the end was so slapstick that it was almost hitting you over the head with an anvil.

If you see the books second hand or on sale it might be worth a risk buying them but other than that I'd say try to check it out first somehow before putting any money down.

Thanks for the thorough review. I am not too into dark humor, so I think I'll pass on the series, unless, like you suggested, I am able to find it inexpensively.

The "Meet the Cast" photos are still on the Facebook page. The digital books are available @$4.99 each on Kindle and Comixology. All are free on Comixology Unlimited.

I wouldn't say it's very dark, about the level of a Supernatural (which makes an uncredited cameo) episode or slightly less.

The original plan was to have the teams meet in the third book, then have Vampire Cheerleaders continue as an anthology horror comic hosted by Lori. (Most were seniors, so it would have to have ended after their prom.) Then the manga paperback market collapsed, and it moved to a webcomic format. The new plan was to have "Vampire Cheerleaders Camp It Up" and "PMS Fall of the PETM", but the fan split reduced the revenues, esp. on Facebook where the pro VC faction had an edge. (Whether they had more numbers or louder voices is debatable.) So the plan was changed again to skip to a final arc "Vampire Cheerleaders in Space ... and Time?!"

I made two posts about my thoughts on the series here and here.

Hyper Magi wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 25, 2018 7:45 pm

Oh boy, do I even want to see what argument occurred this time?


Honestly it's a shame what happened to VC. I liked both the VC and PMS teams so I didn't really have any objection to one of them being "secondary" so long as they received enough attention. A shame criticism on Facebook is taken seriously(People are morons on there, there's countless evidence regarding that). I imagine the ending would have been more satisfying if things didn't end up the way they did.

Not really an argument, just comparing parenting styles. You could also do a comparison of sibling guardianship between Teddy and Stephanie Kane.

It appears indeed that all the strips of Vampire Cheerleaders have been removed from the online archive.

So have all the online strips of Amazing Agent Luna / Amazing Agent Jennifer, as far as I can tell.

I take it it's a Zoom Comics editorial decision, and now the only way of reading their series is to get the paper versions?

tau neutrino wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 26, 2018 11:14 am

Both use grounding as punishment, and the mother is the one who takes the lead in disciplining. Both mothers demand their children be polite to others (that was Heather's main complaint)

That's a pretty broad comparison, since the same can be said of most parents. But I wouldn't use that to say they're alike, particularly the "parent, not a pal" part, because Maria was both.

She disciplined Layla only when it was necessary (two times). Otherwise, she was supportive of her, even after Layla regained her memories as Quintessa, and also tried to bond with her. The most important difference being, Layla's parents weren't being mind controlled by their daughter, so we were allowed to see how they actually were.

Whereas with Heather's parents, we saw how she made them act towards her (including: forcing them to have another child, supply her with spending money, etc.). Which accounted for 3 of their 4 brief appearances in the comic. Point being, we didn't see her parents often enough to determine what they were really like.

And in spite of this, people were convinced they must be emotionally abusive because they were angry first when she broke curfew, and later when they had been freed from the vampire hypnosis and wanted to ban Heather from their home and family for having bled and bred them like cattle.