Tomb of Dracula
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Tomb of Dracula is a horror comic book published by Marvel Comics from April 1972 to August 1979. The 70-issue series featured a group of vampire hunters who fought Count Dracula and other supernatural menaces. On rare occasions, Dracula would work with these vampire hunters against a common threat or battle other supernatural threats on his own, but more often than not, he was the antagonist rather than protagonist. In addition to his supernatural battles in this series, Marvel's Dracula often served as a supervillain to others characters in the Marvel Universe, battling the likes of Blade, Spider-Man, Werewolf by Night, the X-Men, and even the licensed Robert E. Howard character Solomon Kane.
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[edit] Publication history
In 1971, the Comics Code Authority relaxed some of its longstanding rules regarding horror comics, such as a virtual ban on vampires. Marvel had already tested the waters with a "quasi-vampire" character, Morbius, but the company was now prepared to launch a regular vampire title as part of its new line of horror books. After some discussion, it was decided to use the Dracula character, in large part because it was the most famous vampire to the general public, and also because Bram Stoker's creation and secondary characters were by that time in the public domain.
The entire run of Tomb of Dracula was penciled by Gene Colan, with Tom Palmer inking virtually all (although Gil Kane drew many of the covers for the first few years, as he did for many other Marvel titles). Colan based the visual appearance of Marvel's Dracula not on Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, or any other actor who had played the vampire on film, but rather on actor Jack Palance. Ironically, Palance would himself go on to play Dracula in a television production of Stoker's novel the year after ToD debuted.
At first, ToD was plagued by an inability to keep a steady writer, with the first half-dozen issues written by Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin, and Gardner Fox. But the title gained stability and hit its stride when Marv Wolfman became permanent scripter on the seventh issue.
The color title was succeeded by a black-and-white magazine that lasted six issues. An earlier magazine, Dracula Lives!, ran for two years. The color comic was also supplemented by a "Giant-Size" companion quarterly that ran for five issues in the mid-1970s.
Tomb of Dracula ran for seventy issues, until 1979. As cancellation loomed, plans were made to wrap up the storyline and lingering threads by issue #72. However, when management decided at the 11th Hour to terminate the title with #70 instead, the final three issues' worth of story and art had to be compressed into one double-sized book.
Several years later, Dracula resurfaced in an issue of The Uncanny X-Men. However, in appearance, this lord of the undead did not much resemble the Dracula of old, and there remains some discussion among fans over whether or not this was the same Dracula as had appeared in ToD. Although Wolfman and Colan's version had been established as inhabiting the regular Marvel Universe (and battling such super-heroes as Spider-Man and Doctor Strange), there are some who feel that the redesign of the character in the X-Men story was an attempt to establish that the ToD version lived in his own alternate universe, apart from the mainstream Marvel world and characters.
Although Dracula (and all other vampires in the Marvel Universe) were eventually destroyed by the mystical "Montesi Formula" in the pages of Doctor Strange, the vampire lord was revived. Marvel published a four-issue Tomb of Dracula miniseries, reuniting Wolfman and Colan, under its Epic Comics imprint in 1991, and revived Dracula and his foes in the short-lived Nightstalkers and Blade series in the 1990s. Most recently, Dracula took the title role in the miniseries Dracula: Lord of the Undead.
In 2004, Marvel published a four-volume, black-and-white Essential Tomb of Dracula collection, with the first three collecting the 70 issues of Tomb of Dracula plus selections from the black-and-white Tomb of Dracula magazine, and the fourth reprinting the comics stories from Dracula Lives and the remainder of the stories from the Tomb of Dracula magazine. Following the success of these reprints, Dracula returned in three new four-issue miniseries. Stoker's Dracula continued and concluded the adaptation of Dracula that had begun in Dracula Lives twenty years prior, and a new Tomb of Dracula miniseries followed, in which Blade joined a new team of vampire hunters to prevent Dracula achieving godhood. Apocalypse vs. Dracula featured Dracula battling the immortal foe of the X-Men in Victorian London.
Some unresolved plot threads from Tomb of Dracula were addressed in the final three issues of Nightstalkers. These included the fates of Dracula's bride Domini, their son Janus, and vampire-hunter Taj Nital.
[edit] Powers and Abilities
Dracula possesses far greater powers than most vampires. He has superhuman strength, speed, stamina, agility, and reflexes, and is immune to aging, conventional disease, and most forms of injury. He ignores most assaults and regenerates damaged tissue rapidly; however, he must drink blood regularly to survive, and is vulnerable to silver, garlic, sunlight, a wooden stake through the heart, and religious symbols (whose threat is related to the strength of faith of their wielder, provided said religion existed during his human life) and other magic items, such as the Bloodgem. Certain spells, such as the Montesi Formula, can destroy Dracula; however, in all circumstances of apparent destruction, Dracula has been revived by some means. If Dracula fatally drains a victim, that person will arise in three days as a vampire. Dracula can control others; command animals such as rats, bats, and wolves; command other vampires (with limited exceptions); transform into a bat (normal or human size), wolf, or mist (partially or fully); and summon thunderstorms. Dracula does not cast reflections, and he usually cannot enter a house without being invited. His powers have sometimes been greatly amplified and his weaknesses circumvented by magical sources, such as spells of the Darkholders.
Dracula is a skilled combatant and swordsman, specializing in 15th-century warfare and military strategy.
[edit] Major characters
- Dracula himself
- Dr. Quincy Harker, son of Jonathan and Mina Harker, and leader of the vampire hunters; he died in battle with Dracula.
- Dr. Rachel van Helsing, granddaughter of Abraham van Helsing, and leader of the vampire hunters upon Harker's death; she was turned into a vampire by Dracula and subsequently given a mercy killing by Wolverine of the X-Men.
- Blade, son of a woman bitten by a vampire during pregnancy and a valued, yet reluctant ally to Quincy Harker's band of vampire hunters.
- Frank Drake, descendant of Dracula and charter member of Quincy Harker's vampire hunters. Note: Drake's bloodline is based on one of Dracula's marriages prior to his vampirism.
- Hannibal King, a vampire hunter and private investigator who is himself a reluctant vampire, frequent partner of Blade & Drake. He subsisted solely on blood he acquired from blood banks or corpses he found. Thus, he has never taken blood directly from a human being. Thus he was able to survive the Montesi formula and be restored to normal human status.
- Taj Nital, a mute Hindu vampire hunter whose son was vampirized, and who was later transformed into a vampire, and destroyed in Nightstalkers #18.
- Lilith, the Daughter of Dracula, an immortal vampire who was cursed to never die until her father was permanently destroyed; when slain, she was reborn into the body of a woman who was full of hate.
- Deacon Frost, the vampire responsible for the death of Blade's mother and Hannibal King's vampirism. He was an upstart contender for the title of Lord of the Vampires, a title held by Dracula at the time.
- Harold H. Harold, a hack writer who, in a parody of Interview with the Vampire, befriended the vampire hunters in an effort to get material for a book he was writing. He fell victim to Dracula and became a vampire (in Howard the Duck Magazine #5) — though this did not stop him from becoming a successful Hollywood film producer. However, like all vampires, he perished as a result of the casting of the Montesi Formula.
- Anton Lupeski, a Satanist priest through whom Dracula manipulated a cult while impersonating Satan.
- Domini, a member of Anton Lupeski's cult whom Dracula chose as his bride.
- Janus, the son of Dracula and Domini, who was possessed by an angel. He was returned to his child form, and at age five was kidnapped by the vampire Varnae (in the backstory of Nightstalkers #16-18).
- Varnae, the first vampire (and, at one point, enemy of Conan the Barbarian). He was the Lord of the Vampires prior to Dracula, and although he died in the process of making Dracula his heir, he was later revived. He was inspired by the 19th century character Varney the Vampire.
- Nimrod, another Lord of the Vampires prior to Dracula, who killed him in Nimrod's first appearance (Dracula Lives! #3). When Dracula's origin was revised in Bizarre Adventures #33, Nimrod was no longer the true Lord of the Vampires; instead, he was a mentally imbalanced servant of Varnae, and had been empowered by his master as a test of Dracula's worthiness.
[edit] Other media
In 1980, an animated TV-movie was made based on Tomb of Dracula. Much of the main plot was condensed and many characters and subplots were truncated or omitted. It was animated in Japan and sparsely released on cable TV in North America by Harmony Gold U.S.A under the title Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned.
Deacon Frost and Hannibal King from Tomb of Dracula are in the Blade movies, albeit in heavily revised forms.
In the movie Blade: Trinity Hannibal King shows a comic of Tomb of Dracula to Blade.
[edit] References
- The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Dracula
- Don Markstein's Toonopedia: Dracula
- Enter the Tomb of Dracula
- Photon Torpedoes: Tomb of Dracula Part I: The Best Dracula Ever Made
[edit] External links
- Tomb of Dracula cover gallery
- Adrian Wymann The Tomb of Dracula fan site (Issue-by-issue guide and reviews)
