Dracula Lives (1973) #4

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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 of the personality, but not the energy.

The story’s about one Louis Belski, Dracula actor. I thought Wolfman was doing a riff on Bela Lugosi: switching the initials, portraying the actor in his has-been days, ready for Ed Wood to show up with an offer, but apparently not. Belski’s instead just a hack who never achieved the greatness of Lugosi, John Carradine, or Christopher Lee—according to Dracula himself, who’s come to Hollywood to stop Belski from continuing his career.

His career’s incredibly long; Belski started at the studio when it was constructed in 1927. It’s the early seventies; the actor’s apparently in his early to mid-sixties, which kind of explains why he’s not doing well in the part. He’s also a raging drunk who starts pretending he’s really Dracula after shooting’s stopped, attacking those who wrong him, and trying to seduce an ingénue. So the actual Count doesn’t just have to contend with an obnoxious actor; he’s also got to intercede in that actor’s drunken, murderous rampage.

It’s a jam-packed story, with Wolfman sort of overwriting it but never thinking about it—Belski’s age, for instance, but then also the idea Dracula got his stake pulled in Tomb and went out to revival theaters to catch up on how he’d been portrayed in popular media. Also, Belski’s a lousy lead to follow around. It’s like a horror comic where you’re waiting for the villain’s comeuppance, but the collateral damage on the comeuppance is almost too much.

While not bad, it’s definitely disappointing. Especially for the only Ploog in Dracula Lives so far.

Then there are some text pieces; lots of text pieces this issue. And the movie stills with new text are back, though not as jokey as they’ve been before. Now they’re just interstitials. The first two text pieces are a book review about the real Dracula from Chris Claremont. The book’s called In Search of Dracula (and appears to still be in print if one’s interested), but the review’s way too overwrought with Claremont trying to be personable, then the typesetting on movie stills makes it hard to read.

Then Dwight R. Decker contributes a one-page joke vacation text about real Romania? It’s too bad the filler’s not better in Lives. Especially since they appear to be upping the text and lowering the reprint count. There are only two reprint stories.

The first is about a village where everyone thinks this lovely lady is a vampire seducing the local boys, then killing them. The truth’s more complicated and not particularly rewarding, but Joe Maneely’s art’s really good, and it’s only six pages.

The following story is another original (thank goodness they’re still doing three an issue). Gardner Fox writes, Dick Ayers does the art. It’s Dracula versus Countess Elizabeth Báthory. She’s the one who bathed in human blood to stay young. Dracula doesn’t like her getting in on his business, especially when she’s a poser. It’s a tedious twelve pages, partially because the idea’s one-note, but also because Fox’s script isn’t great, and then the Ayers art is a considerable downgrade from the rest in the issue. Not just the new features either, the reprints as well.

Then comes a couple more text pieces. One’s a jokey biography of Marv Wolfman, and the other’s a review of Horror of Dracula by Gerry Boudreau. It’s more a combination of behind-the-scenes and scene-by-scene recap with some scant critical commentary. They threaten more reviews at the end.

The second reprint is a short one, art by Tony Mortellaro, and it seems like they should’ve run it in the first issue because it’s so well-suited for Lives. A German villager only wants his daughter to marry royalty, so he kills off her poor suitors, sometimes letting vampires feed on them for cover. Despite his daughter wanting to choose her own destiny, he decides for her and makes an exceptionally bad selection.

The final story is the third original, written by Gerry Conway (easily his best Dracula in Lives or Tomb and some of his best writing from this era), with art by Vicente Alcazar. Alcazar has maybe two less than perfect panels, but otherwise, the art’s consistently breathtaking.

It’s another of the Dracula origin stories, with the former Impaler retaking his castle from the invading Turks. He’s got to deal with the newly installed regional commander but also the neighborhood Catholic priest who’s got a fairly big secret. Then, of course, there’s still the castle, which the Turks have occupied, and the local girls they’ve enslaved.

The feature’s a page shorter than the issue’s other two—eleven pages instead of twelve—, and it’s a bummer they didn’t give Conway and Alcazar more pages because it’s outstanding. Conway’s characterization of Dracula as vampire king is rather thoughtful, and—given the particulars—Drac gets to be an unproblematic protagonist. Everyone else is doing far worse things than just retaking from occupiers.

Alcazar gets a variety of action to visualize, with Dracula fighting soldiers but also finding himself in his first vampire transformation duel. It’s great.

I had been thinking I’d jump off Dracula Lives after a while, so long as Tomb doesn’t keep citing it; I don’t think I can give it up. Not just for the art either; the Conway writing on the last story is fantastic. Plus, the fifties reprints are surprisingly good. I’d always assumed fifties horror comics would be rote and stale, but nope. They’re succinct enough their initial impulse carries through.

The text material, obviously, is take or leave. Meaning leave.

Tomb of Dracula (1972) #6

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If I remembered this issue closely resembles an early Swamp Thing comic in the Wein and Wrightson era, I’d forgotten. Except Swamp Thing #4 went on sale over three months after this issue of Tomb, so that Swamp Thing resembles this issue, not the other way around.

No spoilers, but it involves the guest monster and the English moors it occupies. Though here in Tomb, “monster” gets quotes. It’s just some guy with horrific medical things going on.

Gardner Fox contributes this issue’s script, and it’s much better than last time. It’s not good, but it’s much better. And there’s never any wonkiness to Gene Colan and Tom Palmer’s art—they’re cooking with gas from page one—making the entire experience relatively smooth. Fox is also more comfortable writing the comic; characters aren’t expounding half their dialogue. The dialogue’s not great, but it’s got some unintentional moments. For example, I’m hoping Fox intended Dracula to come off a wee sexist when describing vampire hunter Rachel Van Helsing and wasn’t just being verbose. And then it’s the best anyone has written erstwhile protagonist Frank Drake. He keeps his mouth shut instead of blabbering.

Well, he blabbers a little—everyone does in the book; Fox hates panels without word balloons or something. But nowhere near before.

Okay, so, the story.

Dracula and Lenore, who he luckily happened upon in the past, come back to the future, only not in the mansion where Dracula started his time travel adventure. Instead, they’re somewhere on the moors; this twist basically breaks the black mirror rules but whatever. They’re back, they’re hungry, and they need to find a place to sleep.

Someone ought to do a montage of Colan panels where Dracula’s ambushing some village girl walking home through the countryside. This issue’s got the third (at least) such scene in the series.

The vampire hunters go back to the castle from their mirror and find Scotland Yard waiting with a hot assignment. Suspected vampire victim on the moors, where there’s also a bog monster, but no one thinks it’s the bog monster.

At first, it seemed like the issue had a rocky plot in the second half until I realized Tomb of Dracula is a chase scene as ongoing comic. They can only catch Dracula once; he can escape them every twenty pages. Entirely changes how the third act sits.

Albeit still with Fox overwriting the dialogue, but it’s more suited for the (out of nowhere) soapy romance he finds in a literal pit. And the art’s superb this issue. Might be the series best, just in terms of quality and effect. Colan and Palmer are on it.

Tomb of Dracula (1972) #5

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Oh, good grief. When I complained ad nauseam about Archie Goodwin’s writing, it didn’t occur to me Marvel would’ve found someone worse to do an issue. Gardner Fox scripts this issue, and, yikes, is it a bad script. While not every line of dialogue has fifty percent exposition—Frank Drake mentions Dracula’s ancestor every time he says Dracula, someone mentioning Taj is mute, some kind of call back to the last issue—many of them do. It’s a jumping-on issue with nothing to induce anyone to keep reading Tomb of Dracula. Except, obviously, the art.

Though Fox doesn’t do the obnoxious second-person narration. He does a profoundly purple, mostly adjective instead; if there were more of it, I’d say the second-person’s better, but it’s relatively sparse. Rather, the terrible dialogue’s endless. There’s no winning.

The issue begins with Dracula and Taj going into a netherworld where demons attack them. Dracula’s pretty sure it’s a Satanic dimension—he tries invoking Satan’s name to send the demons away—but he has to fight them anyway. Plus, he realizes he can’t feed on them, so he’s got to keep Taj alive.

Meanwhile, back in 616, Rachel Van Helsing and Frank realize what’s happened and set out following into the black mirror. Now, when I say “realize what’s happening,” I mean they figure out the exact events from last issue on a series of baseless guesses. What’s even more inexplicable is how it all works out. Dracula got the code for the time-traveling, interdimensional mirror from Ilsa, who intentionally didn’t tell him how to get anyway, just into the mirror and the demon dimension. Dracula then finds his way through another mirror, which takes him back to Transylvania just after Bram Stoker’s novel. He’s dead; Van Helsing is out of town. Dracula wants to off him, so he’s got to wait around.

So, Ilsa initially tried selling her deal on Dracula being able to go to his own past, and he said, hell, no, I won’t go. Rachel and Frank immediately assume he’s going to the past Transylvania, which is a big assumption.

When Dracula gets to the past, he locks up Taj, who he didn’t need to save, as it turns out, and heads to his castle. There he’s got a female vampire locked in a bottle. He’ll release her before the end of the issue so she can attack the vampire hunters while he’s busy doing other things. Not the point. The point is the time-traveling. He doesn’t find his own body in the castle, where it should be, and the lady vampire in the bottle isn’t there in the present either.

The story would make more sense if Fox’s job was to lay this asinine plot out on Gene Colan and Tom Palmer’s existing art. For instance, Abraham Van Helsing has a one-panel cameo; if they were doing a big-time travel story, shouldn’t he be in it more? There’s nothing about time travel in the visuals, just the mirror transporting people. Sure, the castle’s destroyed in the present, but it’d make more sense if it wasn’t Dracula’s castle, wouldn’t it?

Or maybe Fox’s writing is just terrible. The disconnection between the art and the writing is real, though; there’s a story. There’s got to be.

The first few pages with the demon dimension are surprisingly iffy art. Not sure I believe Palmer was inking Colan on those pages because pretty soon, it looks great again. Even if it’s rushed and ill-suited for the story.

Such a strange book. Writing-wise, it keeps falling on its face while the art’s consistently fantastic.

Batgirl: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1 (1967-68)

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The strangest thing about the first five stories in Omnibus Volume 1 isn’t how writer Gardner Fox uses Barbara Gordon’s position at the Gotham Public Library to explain how she somehow targets criminals. She violates professional privacy standards—if not laws (it was the late sixties, who knows)—to figure out where the bad guys are going to strike so she can go out and beat them up before Batman and Robin get there.

I’m going to assume Fox just didn’t know anything about the library profession (were there Ph.D.s in library science in the late sixties or is Barbara’s doctorate just there to be something else for her father not to be impressed with) and not it being some kind of statement on how we should all be a little more fascist when it comes to enabling women (and men) dressed as bats.

The strangest thing is how it takes Fox until the last story to explore how Barbara’s inherent femininity as expressed with concern for her appearance, her deference to men, and her propensity to scream at inopportune times is going to be a problem for crime-fighting. The collection opens with a foreword from Gail Simone talking about how the character—as created—didn’t have much to offer the female readership but reading Fox’s stories?

It’d be worse if he thought there were a female readership. Sure, he’s telling little boys how to be both misogynist and ignorant, but at least he’s not telling little girls their value is only as sex objects for boys? Probably? Like, Fox’s Batgirl isn’t really cheesecake though artists Carmine Infantino and Sid Greene do employ some cheesecake, but there’s this definite undercurrent with Robin lusting after her. But in late sixties Code comics so it’s simultaneously subtle and grossly overdone.

Anyway, why Fox waited until the last story to remind everyone girls are better to look at than anything else—it’s also an about face from earlier stories where Batman tells Robin they have to respect Batgirl even though she’s, you know, a girl–is the strangest thing about his stories. They go out on a low; already brought down by a two-part Catwoman story (Frank Springer pencils the second half; it misses Infantino) where Catwoman is jealous of Batgirl and wants to force Batman to put a ring on it ASAP.

The most amusing part of that story is Fox finding an honest moment with Barbara, who’s surprised and perplexed why Catwoman is all of a sudden pissed off at her.

Aside—it seems like Selina Kyle is publicly infamous costumed criminal Catwoman? Or at least Bruce Wayne knows about it? Even acknowledging these comics require a profound willful suspension of disbelief, but at some point, Fox is responsible for things not making logical sense. And they can’t be too steeped in continuity because this Bat-era is when they were introducing characters from the TV show to try to get TV viewers to read the comics.

Then again, Barbara very obviously should’ve figured out Bruce’s secret identity in one of the stories and there’s even a hint about it, but it goes nowhere. Because Fox’s stories get worse as they go along, as Batgirl is more and more the guest star. At least in the origin story she’s something of a protagonist.

Though she’s the protagonist in the story about her worrying about her hair too much to stop bad guys from trying to kill her.

I thought about writing this post with abundant alliterations but decided against it. Outside keeping a dictionary (or thesaurus, really) handy, there’s not really anything to talk about regarding Fox’s use of alliteration and adjective. I mean, other than to track if it was ripped off from Marvel at this point. Similarly, the frequent sports metaphors in Batgirl’s thought balloons had me expecting her to talk about loving jazz at any point.

But leaving these first five stories—the character’s foundation (Barbara was a new character at this point, right?)—there hasn’t been much in character development or even establishment. Fox avoids Commissioner Gordon conversations with his daughter other than to chastise her for not being more like Batgirl; otherwise, Gordon just speaks in transitional exposition to his daughter. Fox does firmly establish Batgirl’s got no romantic interest in Batman and vice verse (despite Infantino pencilling otherwise at one point), which ended up just making me remember that terrible Killing Joke movie.

It’s not the worst thing it could be. At least until the last story and then, really, the Catwoman ones foreshadow it, but even then it’s not like Batgirl quits being she’s too sexy by far. No, she’s going to keep crime-fighting and use that sexy, just like Batman says.

Ew.

There’s a little of Robin being the sexist teen and Batman having to tell him not to be—within limits—but then there’s also the Robin as Batgirl’s partner thing. It’s a complex web of mediocre comics writing (see how I qualified that one), misogyny, patriarchy, and lots more. Lots of good Infantino art, with Gil Kane pencilling the last story in a way almost indistinguishable from Infantino. The Springer you can tell, but the Kane seems just like more Infantino.

Though it is just cheesecake when Barbara is hanging out in the library after work in her Batgirl costume, which definitely seems like someone—Infantino or Fox—really wants to fetishize it.

So much of these comics should’ve gotten a “No” even in the sixties but—I just realized—they’re objectively a lot less misogynist than DC output from forty years later. It’s a definite flex to present these stories without contextualizing the rampant misogyny because outside the art, any reading of them has to be either subjectively, nostalgically influence or you just have a terrible taste in comics and bad critical thinking skills.

That statement made… obviously I’m going to keep going. Even on sale the book wasn’t cheap.

Showcase 15 (July-August 1958)

This issue of Showcase features Space Ranger, the secret interplanetary superhero identity of Rick Starr. Except Space Ranger wears a see-through helmet, so his identity can’t be very secret.

Rick Starr is a bored blue blood, living some time in the future after humans have colonized other planets in the solar system (and met alien races). Space Ranger is fairly unambitious science fiction, but Edmond Hamilton’s scripts for the two stories in this issue are genial enough. Rick’s got a girlfriend who he doesn’t include on his adventures enough and an adorable little pink shapeshifting alien sidekick.

Space Ranger feels like most other pulp sci-fi, though Hamilton keeps it pretty chaste.

The first story involves a villain with a teleportation ray, the second a planet of robots out to conquer the solar system.

It’s oddly endearing, even if Bob Brown’s art isn’t particularly imaginative or even generally good.