Not long after the Buffy movie premiered in 1992, DC Comics launched a series about a teenage girl who slays vampires in her spare time.
We owned a handful of issues back in the day, but those copies soon dropped out of sight and - apparently - out of our memory.
In fact, the comic disappeared so quickly from fandom’s collective consciousness that your forgetful Fortress Keeper recently wondered if the character actually existed or was a mere figment of his overactive imagination.
A quick Google search unearthed this description of the main character, courtesy of Tenzel Kim from the Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe:
Seventeen-year-old Bly Pharis had it all- brains, beauty, a cute boyfriend named Paul Brock and a bright future. Then the renegade vampire Sunset Sam murdered Bly’s parents and things got very dark. Thrust into a secret world populated by bloodstalkers like Sam and his Road Disciples, Vincent Sforza of the ancient, mysterious Clave and the storm troopers of S.A.V.E., Bly’s only allies seem to be the Nomads, led by a sword-wielding warrior named Kiras.
Betrayed by Paul, who has become Sam’s newest disciple, Bly finds herself captive to a fate she can’t seem to avoid. Before she understands what is happening, Sam’s savage bite changes her life forever. Bly is something different now. More than human, vampire or Nomad, she is something unique and so powerful that even the mighty Clave fears her. Kiras seems to believe that Bly is the Scarlet Redeemer, a figure out of legend, who is destined to become the bane of vampirekind.
He may be right but we’ll have to see what Bly has to say about that.
The series was written, drawn and created by Tom Joyner, Keith S. Wilson and Jim Fern. It’s unknown whether the creators were influenced by the Buffy movie or came up with the idea on their own, but the Scarlett comic met a similar fate: instant obscurity.
However, Scarlett’s creators apparently lacked the doggedness of Joss Whedon as Bly Pharis never received a second shot at success while Buffy Summers achieved iconic status in the justly acclaimed TV series.
To this day, Scarlett remains six feet under - a figure too obscure to even earn a mention in the DC Comics Encyclopedia.
Even Charlton’s Dr. Graves earns more respect…
