ISSUE
TWO: VIRA THE SHE-DEMON
Colored
by Janice Cohen.
The garish cover and B-movie title
introduce us to a time before recorded history, but after issue ones cave
dwellers. Vira, a hungry, brave,
ingenious woman, unwittingly walks into a Cave of Skulls in search of food only
to find a male dominated society performing their ritual to the skulls of
enemies. Using tar, fire, a wooden
shaft and a nearby skull, Vira terrifies the gathered men into believing that
the Stone Spirit has given her power of the dead.
They flee the cave, and Vira runs into the volcanic mountains of what
will be Italy, where she knows the superstitious tribesmen wont follow.
There she comes upon the Stone Spirit and
pleads to it for food and water. The
ageless monolith plants ideas in her developing brain.
Vira uses the bones and mud of the volcanic landscape to return to the
men, scaring them into believing she is an emissary of the great Stone Spirit.
She demandsand readily getsfood, water and what is probably the
first human-built dwelling, as well as a fearful respect that will ultimately
develop into the concept of government in the next several millennia.
One panel shows Vira eating in her new home
as the next panel takes us to the year 2001, in which astronaut Vera Gentry
reports back to mission control that all is well and she will continue her
search on Ganymede for proposed UFOs, which find her, immediately destroy her
craft and chase after her on Jupiters largest moon with the intent purpose of
zapping her to soot.
In her attempt to escape, Vera crawls into
a cave and finds a glowing monolith. With
her attackers catching up, she backs into the monolith to find herself
teleported to her own pool at home with friends on Earth.
As her friends frolic, Vera rests on a lounge chair and ages beyond her
natural life cycle in ten minutes, at which time her friends have
disappeared. The monolith
reappears, changing Vera into a New Seed, which sends itself, knowing its
purpose, into space at the speed of light.