Vampires don’t photograph, we get it. But then why would anyone create a yearbook full of…what?
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That’s the joke. Schools have yearbooks; it’s just what they do. So whoever put it together either didn’t realize or didn’t care the students wouldn’t show up.
I don’t think that Leigh Rubin intended to imply that it was a school only for vampires, nor that producing the book (with no pictures) was a waste of effort. This pair may be the only two vampires attending “Monster High”, and the waste of money was that they bought the yearbook, because their pictures are not in it, even if the rest of the class is shown.
P.S. His accent of course is more like German (and not Transsylvanian), in the classic “Young Frankenstein” tradition.
But don’t forget that there is other stuff in a yearbook:
French Club (2021-2023), National Honor Society (2022-2023), Turning into a Bat (2020-2023), Chess Club…
@kilby: it’s an attempt to capture Bela Lugosi’s accent in his classic rendition of Dracula
Though he never said, “I vant to suck your blood”…
(My sister taught me that his name is pronounced BELa LO-g’shi when she was taking Hungarian.)
I knew vampires aren’t supposed to show up in mirrors, but pictures are a new one to me.
Maggie, following in the tradition of Rule 34 (only SFW), I found this:
So, with vampires, we accept that their images cannot be captured by mirrors; although photographs using mirrored cameras would result in no image of the vampire, digital cameras (which use no mirrors) should now allow the image of the vampire to be captured.
So now we know. Maybe.
For anyone who doesn’t know what a “mirrored camera” means, a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera–the type with the removable lenses that makes the actual sound that your phone emulates when you take a photo–use a mirror to reflect the image from the lens up through the viewfinder. However, the “reflex” part of that name is that the mirror moves out of the way when you press the button to take a photo, and the image goes straight to the shutter behind it and thus (briefly!) to the film behind that.
Thus this “explanation” doesn’t even really make sense: more like “You would have trouble framing a shot of a vampire with an SLR but the photo would appear”, if the “science” were to hold.
Now I’m sorta sorry I bothered to think this through!
A perhaps-better explanation from r/AskScienceFiction on Reddit (blocked at the moment by the Reddit protests) says:
Silver kills or harms vampires, because this metal has power against them. Therefore, silver devices, such as mirrors and photographic film, don’t capture vampire images.
Clearly not a settled issue, perhaps because of a lack of federal funding. Oh, wait–or because vampires don’t exist, maybe?
Film is based on silver halides, so I guess if they were using film for the yearbook pictures the vampires wouldn’t get imaged. But usually they give you a choice of the several pictures they took so they shouldn’t be surprised that their images were blank.
So I like the silver theory for mirrors and cameras as it seems the most “factually plausible” explanation. If it’s the reason, then a vampire should have no trouble showing up in modern mirrors or photographs since silver isn’t used anymore for that.
Thank you @phsiiicidu, @waltmorris, and @Philip for the clarification. But, now that I think about it, why don’t they show up in mirrors? A director’s invention to make it more interesting?
There’s no reason there should be a scientific reason for a centuries-old superstition. I seem to recall seeing it explained by their lack of souls.
You don’t buy a school yearbook for the picture of you; you’ve got lots of those. You buy it for the pictures of everyone else, which suggests it must in fact be a school for vampires and then why…
Vampires don’t have a problem with silver; that’s werewolves. As Treesong points out, the don’t show up in mirrors because they don’t have a soul. Mirrors were thought to reflect the soul, so no soul, no reflection. Of course, that doesn’t explain why everything else has a reflection.
I don’t really like attempts to apply (modern) scientific analysis to “debug” the rationality of creative story elements that were developed for other reasons, long before any of that science was ever discovered (or invented). All one really needs to accept such elements is a certain amount of “suspension of (comic) disbelief“.
P.S. Could Frodo have destroyed the “One Ring” by getting Gandalf to invent an acetylene torch? Do we really need to know how many toilets were installed on the Starship Enterprise? In either case, the proper answer would be “Possibly, but that’s not relevant to the story.”
P.P.S. If a mirror reveals the soullessness of a person, does the fact that the original transporter replaced the images of the Enterprise crew with illuminated silver dust mean that they lost their souls in the process?
P.P.P.S. Or does the fact that the dust was actually aluminum make any difference?
Yes, the photo of “junior” is a empty frame of just the background and maybe a seat. Everyone wants a remembrance of their school years, even if one does not show up in their photos.
Hey – putting together those yearbooks are enough work to turn one into vampire! “Why is the photo of my son missing him?” “Um, sorry Mr. V, we could not figure out why every photo taken of him was missing him – and we didn’t have enough time for retakes.
I know what it’s like, I was editor of chief of my college book. Now, if the unwritten rule for this yearbook followed the one at my college – the EIC will be marrying the managing editor.
Comics I Don't Understand 
That’s the joke. Schools have yearbooks; it’s just what they do. So whoever put it together either didn’t realize or didn’t care the students wouldn’t show up.
I don’t think that Leigh Rubin intended to imply that it was a school only for vampires, nor that producing the book (with no pictures) was a waste of effort. This pair may be the only two vampires attending “Monster High”, and the waste of money was that they bought the yearbook, because their pictures are not in it, even if the rest of the class is shown.
P.S. His accent of course is more like German (and not Transsylvanian), in the classic “Young Frankenstein” tradition.
But don’t forget that there is other stuff in a yearbook:
French Club (2021-2023), National Honor Society (2022-2023), Turning into a Bat (2020-2023), Chess Club…
@kilby: it’s an attempt to capture Bela Lugosi’s accent in his classic rendition of Dracula
Though he never said, “I vant to suck your blood”…
(My sister taught me that his name is pronounced BELa LO-g’shi when she was taking Hungarian.)
I knew vampires aren’t supposed to show up in mirrors, but pictures are a new one to me.
Maggie, following in the tradition of Rule 34 (only SFW), I found this:
So, with vampires, we accept that their images cannot be captured by mirrors; although photographs using mirrored cameras would result in no image of the vampire, digital cameras (which use no mirrors) should now allow the image of the vampire to be captured.
So now we know. Maybe.
For anyone who doesn’t know what a “mirrored camera” means, a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera–the type with the removable lenses that makes the actual sound that your phone emulates when you take a photo–use a mirror to reflect the image from the lens up through the viewfinder. However, the “reflex” part of that name is that the mirror moves out of the way when you press the button to take a photo, and the image goes straight to the shutter behind it and thus (briefly!) to the film behind that.
Thus this “explanation” doesn’t even really make sense: more like “You would have trouble framing a shot of a vampire with an SLR but the photo would appear”, if the “science” were to hold.
Now I’m sorta sorry I bothered to think this through!
P.S. That was from
A perhaps-better explanation from r/AskScienceFiction on Reddit (blocked at the moment by the Reddit protests) says:
Silver kills or harms vampires, because this metal has power against them. Therefore, silver devices, such as mirrors and photographic film, don’t capture vampire images.
Clearly not a settled issue, perhaps because of a lack of federal funding. Oh, wait–or because vampires don’t exist, maybe?
Film is based on silver halides, so I guess if they were using film for the yearbook pictures the vampires wouldn’t get imaged. But usually they give you a choice of the several pictures they took so they shouldn’t be surprised that their images were blank.
So I like the silver theory for mirrors and cameras as it seems the most “factually plausible” explanation. If it’s the reason, then a vampire should have no trouble showing up in modern mirrors or photographs since silver isn’t used anymore for that.
Thank you @phsiiicidu, @waltmorris, and @Philip for the clarification. But, now that I think about it, why don’t they show up in mirrors? A director’s invention to make it more interesting?
There’s no reason there should be a scientific reason for a centuries-old superstition. I seem to recall seeing it explained by their lack of souls.
You don’t buy a school yearbook for the picture of you; you’ve got lots of those. You buy it for the pictures of everyone else, which suggests it must in fact be a school for vampires and then why…
Vampires don’t have a problem with silver; that’s werewolves. As Treesong points out, the don’t show up in mirrors because they don’t have a soul. Mirrors were thought to reflect the soul, so no soul, no reflection. Of course, that doesn’t explain why everything else has a reflection.
I don’t really like attempts to apply (modern) scientific analysis to “debug” the rationality of creative story elements that were developed for other reasons, long before any of that science was ever discovered (or invented). All one really needs to accept such elements is a certain amount of “suspension of (comic) disbelief“.
P.S. Could Frodo have destroyed the “One Ring” by getting Gandalf to invent an acetylene torch? Do we really need to know how many toilets were installed on the Starship Enterprise? In either case, the proper answer would be “Possibly, but that’s not relevant to the story.”
P.P.S. If a mirror reveals the soullessness of a person, does the fact that the original transporter replaced the images of the Enterprise crew with illuminated silver dust mean that they lost their souls in the process?
P.P.P.S. Or does the fact that the dust was actually aluminum make any difference?
Yes, the photo of “junior” is a empty frame of just the background and maybe a seat. Everyone wants a remembrance of their school years, even if one does not show up in their photos.
Hey – putting together those yearbooks are enough work to turn one into vampire! “Why is the photo of my son missing him?” “Um, sorry Mr. V, we could not figure out why every photo taken of him was missing him – and we didn’t have enough time for retakes.
I know what it’s like, I was editor of chief of my college book. Now, if the unwritten rule for this yearbook followed the one at my college – the EIC will be marrying the managing editor.