The Tomb of Dracula

The Tomb of Dracula
File:Tombofdracula.jpg Count Dracula from The Tomb of Dracula.
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Schedule	Monthly
Format	color
Publication date	April 1972–August 1979
No. of issues	70
Main character(s)	Count Dracula
Creative team
Written by	Marv Wolfman
Penciller(s)	Gene Colan
Inker(s)	Tom Palmer

The Tomb of Dracula is a horror comic book series 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 other 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.

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, the Living Vampire, 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.

At first, The Tomb of Dracula 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 with the seventh issue.

The entire run of The 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. Palance would play Dracula in a television production of Stoker's novel the year after The Tomb of Dracula debuted.

The 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 eleventh 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, culminating with Dracula's apparent death and dispersal.

The color title was succeeded by a black-and-white magazine (with stories also drawn by Gene Colan) that lasted six issues. An earlier magazine, Dracula Lives!, published by the Marvel imprint Curtis Magazines, ran from 1973 to 1975. The color comic was also supplemented by a "Giant-Size" companion quarterly that ran for five issues in the mid-1970s.

Appearance in other titles

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 the Tomb series, and there remains some discussion among fans over whether or not this was the same Dracula. Although Wolfman and Colan's version had been established as inhabiting the regular Marvel Universe (and battling such super-heroes as Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Thor, and the Silver Surfer), there are some who feel that the redesign of the character in the X-Men story was an attempt to establish that the Tomb of Dracula 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 Montessi Formula in the pages of Doctor Strange, the vampire lord was revived. Marvel published a four-issue Tomb of Dracula mini-series, 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. Some unresolved plot threads from The 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. More recently, Dracula took the title role in the mini-series Dracula: Lord of the Undead.

From 2003 to 2005, as part of its Essential Marvel line of books, Marvel published a four-volume, black-and-white Essential Tomb of Dracula collection, with the first three collecting the 70 issues of The 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 mini-series. Stoker's Dracula continued and concluded the adaptation of Dracula by Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano that had begun in Dracula Lives twenty years prior, and a new Tomb of Dracula mini-series 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.

In 2008 Marvel launched the first of three Marvel Omnibus dedicated to reprint Tomb of Dracula.

Major characters

Dracula attempting to "vampirize" Rachel van Helsing in The Tomb of Dracula #40 (Jan. 1976). Art by Gene Colan & Tom Palmer.

• Dracula
• Dr. Quincy Harker, son of Jonathan and Mina Harker, and crippled 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. Blade possesses quasi-vampiric abilities, including a greatly prolonged lifespan and the ability to sense supernatural creatures, as well as an immunity to complete vampirism.
• 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 and had 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 of considerable strength (sufficient to temporarily restrain Dracula) 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 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 Montessi 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 back story 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.

Collected editions

The comics have been collected as part of the Essential series of trade paperbacks. The volumes are:

• Volume 1 (560 pages, 2003, Panini, ISBN 1904159621, Marvel, ISBN 078510920X)
  • Collects Tomb of Dracula #1-25, Werewolf By Night #15, Giant-Size Chillers #1
• Volume 2 (592 pages, 2004, Panini, ISBN 190523905X, Marvel, ISBN 0785114610)
  • Collects Tomb of Dracula #26-49, Dr. Strange #14, Giant-Size Dracula #2-5
• Volume 3 (584 pages, 2004, Panini, ISBN 1905239068, Marvel, ISBN 0785115587)
  • Collects Tomb of Dracula #50-70, The Tomb of Dracula Magazine #1-4
• Volume 4 (576 pages, 2005, Panini, ISBN 1905239203, Marvel, ISBN 0785117091)
  • Collects Tomb of Dracula Magazine #2, 4-6, Dracula Lives! #1-13, Frankenstein Monster #7-9

Some of the nudity was removed from the fourth volume. Publisher Dan Buckley explained, "That wasn't because we were going to bookstores, or because we were exclusively going to hobby shops. It probably had more with where we were at from a ratings standpoint and the editors felt that was the appropriate thing to do, considering how we communicate what's going on in our books from a packaging standpoint. ...We generally avoid nudity, unless it's a MAX title. We don't want to take an Essential volume and start calling it MAX; then you get into branding issues." Retailers' opinions on the matter are split.

A Marvel Omnibus collecting The Tomb of Dracula #1-31, Werewolf by Night #15, Giant-Size Chillers #1, and Giant-Size Dracula #2-4 was released in November 2008. The second volume, collecting The Tomb of Dracula #32-70, Giant-Size Dracula #5, and Dr. Strange #14 was released in October 2009. The third volume, collecting Tomb of Dracula Magazine #1-6, Frankenstein Monster #7-9, and Dracula Lives! #1-13 was scheduled to be released in October 2010.

Other media

Television

In 1980, an animated television movie based on The Tomb of Dracula was released. The film was called Yami no Teio Kyuketsuki Dracula (Dracula: The Vampire Emperor of Darkness). Much of the main plot was condensed and many characters and subplots were truncated or omitted. The film was animated in Japan by Toei and sparsely released on cable TV in North America in 1983 by Harmony Gold dubbed into English and under the title Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned.

Film

Blade, a character introduced in The Tomb of Dracula, has been featured in a series of three films: Blade (1998), Blade II (2002), and Blade: Trinity (2004), as well as a short-lived television series titled Blade: The Series (2006). Other Tomb of Dracula characters, Deacon Frost and Hannibal King, have been featured in these films (Frost in Blade, King in Blade: Trinity), albeit in heavily revised forms. Reference to the Tomb of Dracula series is made in Blade: Trinity when King shows an issue of the comic to Blade.

Dracula himself does not appear in the series until Blade: Trinity, in which he goes by the name of "Drake" and features an origin and powers that differ from the comics. He is played in the film by Dominic Purcell. Given Drake's age and origin, he, more than any other vampire that followed, can harness a much greater and more dynamic range of abilities. He possesses superhuman strength, much greater than that of Blade, as well as incredible speed. Like those he sired, he is capable of leaping great distances and seems to be knowledgeable of sword fighting techniques, even rivaling Blade himself. Drake's true power, however, is derived from his origin as the first of his species. The manipulation of energies which lead to his first resurrection left Drake with two forms: human and a demonic alter ego. In this form, Drake is much stronger, resilient to all forms of damage and much taller than his human form. He also possesses very keen senses, allowing him, for example, to catch an arrow in mid-air.

The Curse of Dracula

Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan returned to Dracula comics with The Curse of Dracula, a three-issue miniseries published in 1998. The miniseries was published by Dark Horse Comics and was not officially associated with Marvel's Dracula series. A trade paperback collection was published in 2005.

References

• The Tomb of Dracula at the Big Comic Book DataBase
• Tomb of Dracula (1972) at the Grand Comics Database
• Tomb of Dracula (1972) at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)
• Tomb of Dracula (1979) at the Grand Comics Database
• Tomb of Dracula (1979) at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)
• Tomb of Dracula (1991) at the Grand Comics Database
• Tomb of Dracula (1991) at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)
• Tomb of Dracula (2004) at the Grand Comics Database
• Tomb of Dracula (2004) at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)
• Enter the Tomb of Dracula

External links

• The Tomb of Dracula fan site by Adrian Wymann (Issue-by-issue guide and reviews)
• Review of Essential Tomb of Dracula Volume 1 from Pulp and Dagger
• Review of Essential Tomb of Dracula Volume 2 from UGO
• Review of Essential Tomb of Dracula Volume 1 from Comics Bulletin
• Review of Essential Tomb of Dracula Volume 2 from Comics Bulletin
• Japanese anime adaptation of The Tomb of Dracula