Dampyr #172 (2014) 'The Lady Pope of Rome'

This Italian supernatural adventure series has a lot of conceptual overlap with John Constantine and Doctor Who, traveling around and helping someone different in each episode. Harlan Draka is a sort of super-hero in plain clothes. He's a "Dampyr," the half-vampire son of Dracula. His blood is poison to vampires, so he coats his weapons with it.

This story breaks the Dampyr mold in several ways. First, it takes place in Italy, which is surprisingly rare for comics published by Bonelli. Second, many Dampyr issues show Harlan helping a local who serves as a secondary protagonist for the story, but in this case it's not clear until quite late in the story who that person is. This issue also features more plot twists than the average. For once, the cover depicts a scene in the story rather than just a collage of ideas therein.

Many Dampyr stories explore some historical event or person and then inject vampires or monsters into the narrative. In this case, the subject is Olimpia Maidalchini, the sister-in-law of aged Pope Innocent X in the seventeenth century. She was deemed by many to have unseemly influence at the papal court, and many uncomplimentary stories swirled around her. So yes, in this story, she's an evil vampire that Harlan must hunt down, with the help of his trusty friend Kurjak. Along the way, we learn a bit about gangs of Rome and vernacular Italian poets.

I have chosen to render the Italian title "La Papessa di Roma" as "Lady Pope" rather than "Popess" for clarity. The full title may be a little redundant; don’t all popes live in Rome? The spelling of Olimpia's name has not been modernized. Here is a bust of the woman herself.