Vasco de Silva, the Vapor Lord

Vasco de Silva, the Vapor Lord in Robyn Hood: I Love NY, is a strange one. You can destroy the body he's using and still not be done with him. Spoilers for issues 5 and 7, and some of what happens later in the series. His story here runs through “This Sucks” and “A Hunter, an Archer, and a Sucker,” part of Lou Iovino's twelve-issue run. Angelica Blackstone, also known as Hellchild, explains that the Vapor Lords arose during the Visigoth period in Spain. They were supposed to be extinct, but Vasco is still around. He's presented as the last one. When we first see him in issue 5, he looks like an old man pushing a shopping cart. A werewolf mother and her two sons confront him, and they seem pretty sure they can handle him. They know who he is. They just don't realize how much trouble they're in. He kills both sons and makes a point of taunting their mother about it. All three end up dead. When the police examine the bodies, they've been drained of all their fluids, right down to the bone marrow. Then there's his home in an abandoned children's hospital on Staten Island. He has people chained to the wall with taps in them so he can fill his cup. He comes in and talks to them like he's greeting his family. They're barely people to him. They're something to drink. Robyn would normally go to Liesel Van Helsing for help with a vampire, but Liesel is away, so she goes to Angelica. That conversation doesn't go particularly well at first. Robyn describes Vasco as one of Angelica's kind, and Angelica gets angry. She never chose to become what she is. Robyn tells her that she still gets to decide how she lives now. Angelica eventually agrees to help. Later, when Vasco calls her his sister, she wants nothing to do with him. Being a vampire doesn't make her willing to accept him as family. Helpful Links Robyn Hood: I Love NY issue 5, where Robyn and Angelica face Vasco: https://zenescope.com/products/robyn-hood-i-love-ny-5 Issue 7, where he returns and Robyn teams up with Liesel: https://zenescope.com/products/robyn-hood-i-love-ny-7 The trouble with fighting him is that he can turn into mist before an arrow or a blade reaches him. Robyn can aim as well as she likes, but it doesn't help if he stops being solid. He keeps moving around them and attacking from different directions. So Angelica lets him bite her. While he's feeding, she holds him in place and gives Robyn a chance to shoot him. Then they keep attacking together. He starts slowing down, they keep landing hits, and Robyn finally puts an arrow through his chest. His body falls apart into vapor. They think they've killed him. Angelica even thanks Robyn afterward for reminding her that she gets to choose what she does with her life. But there's still some of Vasco left in that room. Issue 7 goes back to that same scene. Robyn is on the phone telling the police they've destroyed the vampire, while a little of the remaining mist slips into one of his dead captives. A week later, a woman comes to the morgue to identify her brother Michael. His body gets up with Vasco inside it. He kills the doctor and turns toward the sister, already talking about feeding and getting revenge. So losing a body doesn't necessarily kill him. He says he had his previous host for six hundred years. That's how long he was in that body; we don't get his exact age here. He looks very different this time. The white-haired man is gone, replaced by a much larger creature with a jaw that opens apart and a whole lot more teeth. Liesel says drinking Angelica's blood made him stronger. The bite they used to catch him the first time has made him even harder to deal with. Angelica can feel that he's back, but she doesn't know what the bite might mean for her. She wants to stay away unless they absolutely need her. Robyn goes after him with Liesel this time. They find him beneath the Waldorf, using the abandoned tracks to move around Midtown. He's feeding heavily after taking a new host, and there are plenty of people around for the holidays. They do manage to hurt him. Robyn shoots part of his jaw away, but he can still turn into mist and leave. They can't keep the attack going long enough to finish him. After they get out of there, Liesel gets an idea while they're walking through the snow. She builds a weapon that can freeze him. Robyn draws him into a fight at Rockefeller Center, and it gets pretty bad for her. He catches her on the ice, cuts her badly, and tastes her Highborn blood. Liesel gets there before he can finish her and freezes him solid. This time they aren't satisfied with watching him fall down. The police plan to keep him frozen, put him in an airtight container, and seal the whole thing in concrete. Robyn says they should bury it too. He's left frozen and being taken away, with all those precautions against another escape. And the blood Robyn lost turns out to matter a lot. Fuchs comes back to the rink, kills the officers guarding the scene, and chips the bloody ice into a jar. Later, that blood is used in Alina Rose's attempt to take Robyn's dark power and her place in the prophecy. Vasco doesn't need a complicated plan to cause a lot of trouble. He's looking for people to feed on, and then he's looking for revenge. But getting rid of him takes more than putting an arrow through him. Robyn needs Angelica's help to bring down the first body, and then Liesel has to find a way to keep the next one from escaping. Even after they stop him, Robyn still has to deal with what happened on that ice. Fuchs got the blood he needed without having to fight her for it.