The Stop Button
blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
Category: Dracula Lives
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They do briefly mention Dracula Lives’s impending demise; very, very briefly. It’s an excellent finale, with a couple surprising successes, but—outside a three-page Russ Heath portfolio (two Draculas and a Lilith, with lots of nipple bumps the Code’d never allow)—it’s a very different kind of issue. Besides the letters column (which doesn’t seem to reference…
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No mention of Dracula Lives!’s forthcoming cancellation in the letters page, nor any explanation for the Bram Stoker’s Dracula adaptation skipping a month. Instead, the issue seems committed to origin stories; how Bram Stoker’s Dracula became the Marvel Universe’s Dracula. Or, in the case of Doug Moench’s three-part feature, how Marvel’s Dracula became Bram Stoker’s…
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I had planned on opening bemoaning Dracula Lives only having two issues left just when the series has found itself again, but then I did some research and discovered it’s worse than the series just canceling. They’re not going to finish the Bram Stoker’s Dracula adaptation here; there’s no more Lilith (more on her adventures…
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The secret to Doug Moench on Dracula Lives is the art. Tony DeZuñiga does a great, sometimes sketchy, always emotive style for their story this issue, and it’s fantastic. The art’s moody enough to sell Moench’s more turgid exposition. They’re on the first story, which takes place in 1809 Transylvania, though the outfits and mannerisms…
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Until the last story, which might be the least impressive entry in an issue of unimpressive entries… I think the most successful art, overall, in the issue is Ernie Chan’s one-pager. It opens the issue, with a Tony Isabella script, all about the various ways of killing vampires. It’s amusing and practical; statements it’s difficult…
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I may be committing sacrilege, but I’m not a fan of Pablo Marcos’s Dracula. Sure, the outfit looks good, but Dracula himself—with his seventies stash—looks more like a plumber than the prince of darkness. The issue opens with a Marcos pin-up; I’m not just taking the chance to gripe. In other words, I was again…
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I fear Dracula Lives has reached a turning point and not for the better. While this issue retains the same page count as previous issues, there’s a lot less content. Comics content. There’s still text content, including Tony Isabella finding his voice in his Taste the Blood of Dracula review, but there’s a little bit…
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I’m trying to decide if this issue is lackluster or if I’m just peeved I’ve managed to outpace Tomb of Dracula in my Dracula Lives read-through. The first story refers to future issues of Tomb, which would be spoilers if the comics weren’t fifty years old and I hadn’t read them already. Well, except this…
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This issue starts with the Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which I read in reprint. I’m not going to check the original novel, but I’m not sure Stoker had Jonathan Harker be a shitty racist about China (complaining about how their trains ran in 1897). Harker writes in his diary…
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I’m getting to be such a Mike Ploog snob. Seeing him ink his own pencils, then seeing others ink his pencils… the latter always seems to come with qualifications, asterisks, and compromises. Ploog pencils this issue’s first story, written by Marv Wolfman, with Ernie Chan inking him. Chan keeps much of the detail, even much…
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There aren’t any pages of the Dracula movie stills with new dialogue. There are still some movie stills with accompanying text, but it’s not for laughs. It’s a welcome change to Dracula Lives, though the pages instead seem to be going to somewhat middling text material. But first, the comics. Writer Marv Wolfman contributes another…
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There’s a thirteen-page Neal Adams warlord Dracula comic this issue, and I don’t understand why it’s not a bigger deal. Like, it’s gorgeous. Of course, the other stories have good art, too… well, the Gene Colan and Dick Giordano one, but the Adams one is kind of an immediate classic. I started reading Dracula Lives…
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Dracula Lives offers a considerable bang for its six-bit cover price. There are three new Dracula features and three old Marvel (from the Atlas days) reprint strips. The reprints are from black and white horror comics and perfectly match Lives’s format. There’s also a Marv Wolfman article covering Dracula movies; Wolfman doesn’t contribute a script…
The Stop Button 