Dracula Lives (1973) #3

Dl3

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 part of Dracula’s Marvel origin. After becoming a vampire, killing his captors, and dropping his infant son off with some gypsies because a vampire can’t be a daddy, a flock of vampire bats descend on Dracula and again take him captive. He’s off to see Nimrod, Lord of the Vampires, only Dracula’s not going to bow to anyone, so he and Nimrod schedule a duel. Only then Nimrod’s lady tries to seduce Dracula, who isn’t into vampire ladies. Too cold.

John Buscema pencils, Syd Shores inks. It’s probably the best art in the issue, with only one real competitor, but it’s somewhat uneven. Close-ups are great, medium and long shots are iffy on the faces. And then the final battle eventually runs out of steam and ends abruptly. Good writing from Wolfman, though, and lots of the art’s solid.

The second story is one of the two fifties reprints in this issue. Larry Woromay does the art on the story, which recounts the tale of a man born disfigured who wants to become a vampire to make people pay for mistreating him. Only he can’t stand the thought of drinking blood. The end has a “twist,” but the story’s primarily successful for Woromy’s art. Lots of personality to it.

Then comes the first text piece—Doug Moench writing about Bela Lugosi and the 1931 Dracula movie. It’s a thoughtful piece examining how the film’s aged. Probably a little long, but Moench’s got good observations.

The following story is Dracula versus Solomon Kane, so Marvel did a multi-license crossover decades before the competition. Only not exactly because Dracula was never copyrighted in the United States, and the British one had run its course already.

Solomon Kane’s trying to find a missing girl in Transylvania. First, he’s fighting bandits, then wolves, with Dracula showing up to save him at the last minute. Dracula doesn’t know anything about the girl, but wouldn’t Solomon like to spend the night at the castle.

Roy Thomas writes, Alan Weiss pencils, and the “Crusty Bunkers” ink. They must sit at the same table with Many Hands. Supposedly Dick Giordano and Neal Adams did some of the inking. The art’s good but occasionally sparse. There’s great action, though, because obviously, Dracula didn’t offer Kane a place to crash not wanting to suck his blood.

It’s a Solomon Kane story guest-starring Dracula; it’s okay.

Next up is Chris Claremont’s text piece from the perspective of Van Helsing, set to pictures from the Hammer movies of Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. I get they needed to fill the pages, and the story’s better than the movie still rewrites, but it’s still a quick gimmick dragged out over six pages.

The second reprint has Chuck Winter art and is a reasonably straightforward Macbeth adaptation until the last panel. Winter’s art is emotive but rushed, and the big reveal at the end isn’t an improvement on Shakespeare. Shocker. The adaptation also severely reduces Lady Macbeth’s part.

The final story is from Gerry Conway and Alfonso Font. It continues last issue’s New Orleans adventure for Drac, this time getting him all the way to Paris. A mystery woman is out to kill him, there’s a gargoyle flying around the city, lots going on.

Font’s art is design-oriented and fairly good, except Dracula looks a little silly. He’s very formally dressed and finely coiffed, but in a very distinct, very not Dracula Lives style. Font does a fantastic job with the Paris setting, just not the count. It might feature the best “bat” action, though it might also just be Paris.

The Conway story is okay. But, unfortunately, it’s a little too busy for the story we end up getting.

Dracula Lives doesn’t have any home run art outings this issue, which really hurts it. It’s a string of “not bad,” though at least the Wolfman one has some emotional weight. Then the text pieces seem like filler even when they’re okay.

Dracula Lives (1973) #2

Dl2

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 because the Tomb of Dracula editors’ notes promised it’d fill in the backstory. Given Tomb’s unsteady continuity, I got curious; I’d also heard Dracula Lives was pretty good, the PG-17 version of TOD. But it’s not addressing the main series’s continuity issues.

Adams’s art is on the Dracula origin story, written by Marv Wolfman. Set in the fifteenth century, it begins with Dracula falling in battle against the Turks. They find him almost dead and decide to puppet him around to get everyone else to surrender, bringing him to a gypsy who swears she’ll make him right. Well, maybe, baby, the gypsy lied. She’s a vampire, and she’s going to turn Dracula for being such a shit to her people.

So, a note. Punishing a megalomaniac by making them immortal seems like a strange choice.

But the story does give vampire Dracula a better origin than, say, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He renounces his bad acts, which put his loving wife and little baby son in danger. He’s sympathetic, partially because the lead Turk is cartoonishly evil—though not cartoonish because Adams’s art is detailed and exuberantly so. It’s a good origin. Well-written by Wolfman, singular art by Adams.

Doesn’t answer any questions about Dracula knowing the vampire hunters from after the novel and before TOD #1.

Then there’s an old Atlas horror reprint; no credited writer, and Joe Sinnott art. It’s about a grave keeper swindling the local vampires. It’s a fairly by-the-numbers horror strip, and it’s pretty dang good. Sinnott’s got a good sense of humor, a lot of personality in his characters, and great use of shadows.

So there are two reprints, three original stories, and some of those one-page Dracula movie stills with new “dialogue,” but there’s also Chris Claremont doing a text piece. It’s a letter to the editor about how Bram Stoker got Dracula wrong. It’s not great, but it’s okay. What’s strange about it is the timing–Dracula Lives #2 came out in 1973, and two years later, Fred Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tape came out. Tape’s all from Dracula’s perspective; it’s different from Claremont’s piece, but there are resemblances. Enough to wonder.

The text piece delays the weak comic. Written by Tony Isabella, from a Steve Gerber plot, with art by Jim Starlin (layouts by Jim Starlin) and Syd Shores finishing. Shores draws everyone like a caricature, which is something. But the story’s about Castle Dracula during World War II when Nazis occupied it and terrorized the local gypsies. One night a vampire appears, but it can’t be Dracula because Van Helsing killed him.

It should be good.

It’s not. But it should be. The art’s not good enough, the writing’s not good enough, but the concept’s not terrible. Though it directly contradicts TOD continuity.

The second reprint is a Stan Lee-penned entry, also an Atlas, about a corrupt politician who hires guys to vote using dead people’s names. Men, specifically, though that detail’s not a plot point.

Fred Kida does the art.

Art’s fine. Story’s really long without much pay-off.

The art in the final story, another original, makes up for it. It’s the Colan and Giordano art. Dracula in New Orleans. Gene Colan drawing the French Quarter with Dick Giordano inking. It’s glorious.

Roy Thomas writes. It’s an okay story about Dracula mysteriously waking up in New Orleans—directly following last issue’s New York adventure—and it’s got something to do with voodoo queen Marie Laveau. The story opens with a cemetery tour where the guide is talking about Laveau (then saying people who go into debt deserve to die, don’t you agree, which is a bizarre bit of dialogue), and it just happens to figure into the Dracula plot.

Story doesn’t matter; it’s all about the art. Art’s absolutely fantastic and not even as good as the Adams art on the first story.

The story also has a panel with The Zombie (Simon Garth), telling everyone to check out his new comic, which is an interesting bit of Marvel shared universe cross-promotion. It’s like reading a Spider-Man comic or something.

So, overall, three of the five stories are good, two are middling, the text piece isn’t terrible, and the photo dialogue things are bad but brief. Dracula Lives is a heck of a comic. Especially when it’s got such exceptional art.