VAMPYRATES! #2

The adventure takes to the high seas as Nira attempts to flee for her life! Nira may have escaped the usurpers of her throne by stowing away on a pirate ship, but she’s not out of danger yet. The ship’s captain seems to hate her for her own mysterious reasons, and suddenly it’s all hands-on deck for the onetime empress! Will it be execution by way of a stake through the heart? Dying in a blast of sulphury cannon fire? Or can Nira figure out a way to survive this next round? Fred Van Lente is a six-time New York Times bestselling comics writer, novelist, and playwright whose work spans mystery/thrillers to historical fiction to superheroes to comedy. Van Lente burst onto the scene with his first collaboration with cartoonist Ryan Dunlavey, Action Philosophers, which became a YALSA Best Book for Teens, a 2025 Ringo Award nominee for Best Humor Comic, and which the NYTcalled "intensely goofy but intellectually rigorous”.From there he went on to a long career at Marvel, where he worked on titles like The Amazing Spider-Man, Captain America, and Marvel Zombies. He’s also written for DC, Archie Comics, Dark Horse, BOOM! Studios, Dynamite Comics, and Valiant, where his run on Archer & Armstrong was nominated for a Harvey Award for Best Continuing Series.Luca Pizzari was lured by Italian editions of Marvel superhero comics at a very early age and decided right there to make a living out of it, much to his mother's still-ongoing dismay.Since then he has penciled and inked interiors and covers for books like Spider-Man, Conan, Weapon X, Star Wars, Thanos, Transformers, Moon Knight, G.I. Joe, and more, with the likes of major publishers like Marvel, IDW, and BOOM! Studios.When not drawing comics he can be found on his pizza-encrusted couch in Brooklyn, beating the same video games over and over again.