Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 4 - creator labels 2

Here's a volume with a huge number of creators so it takes more than one separate post to fit all the labels in. There's another post as well.

Essential Werewolf by Night volume 1 - creator labels

Once more we come across a volume with many creators, so here is the usual separate post to carry the labels for some of them.

Essential Man-Thing volume 1

Hoh boy. This is the one that brings out all the sniggering.

So let's take this slowly. Essential Man-Thing volume 1 contains material from multiple titles including issues of Giant-Size Man-Thing.

Let's just pause for a moment to let everyone get the sniggering out of their system.

[Lengthy pause.]

All done? Because there won't be another break.

(But on an aside, did the term "man-thing" actually have such connotations in early 1970s America, or are the sniggers all down to latter-day use of the term or even transatlantic differences? A quick Google search is unhelpful, being dominated by the comic character, but then the term is far from the most common name for the... well you know.)

Now down to business.

Essential Man-Thing volume 1 contains the eponymous creature's earliest appearances and issues, consisting of material from Savage Tales #1, Ka-Zar's feature in Astonishing Tales #12-13, Adventure into Fear #10-19, Man-Thing #1-14, Giant-Size Man-Thing #1-2 and Monsters Unleashed #5 & #8-9. Most of these series were anthologies in either comic or magazine format, the latter not falling under the Comics Code Authority and allowing for less censored material. Adventures into Fear was previously a reprint series and then became another long-run try-out title before successful characters received a title in their own right. Bonus material includes Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries for both the Man-Thing and Jennifer Kale. One notable omission is the cover to Savage Tales #1 but on investigation it seems that this is because the cover spotlights Conan the Barbarian and so presumably having lost the Conan licence Marvel are unable to reprint it even when accompanying a non-Conan story.

The Man-Thing's debut in the magazine Savage Tales is written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway and drawn by Gray Morrow. All contribute to subsequent tales which are written mainly by Steve Gerber, with contributions by Len Wein and Tony Isabella. The art is mostly by Val Mayerik and Mike Ploog with contributions by John Buscema, Neal Adams, Rich Buckler, Howard Chaykin, Jim Starlin, Alfredo Alcala, Vincente Alcazar and Pat Broderick. As this produces many labels, some have been placed in a separate post.

Reading through this volume I've felt as though I was stuck in a swamp myself. It has been a very long and slow read and, although a variety of real world events have intervened to contribute to that, the series itself has not proved very inspiring at times. At the heart of it the series suffers two major problems. One is the complete mindlessness of the title creature, resulting in no dialogue or character development at all and making it hard to get interested in what happens to him. The other is the swamp environment not lending itself to many obvious story types and the ones that are do get used fall into a mixture of stiltedness or just plain weirdness.

There's a long tradition of swamp monsters and it's now unknown just whether the inspiration for the Man-Thing or the Swamp Thing came first. But it takes more than just a walking mound of slime to create excitement. For the Man-Thing there's an attempt to create some tragedy through his origin as we see scientist Ted Sallis betrayed to spies by his assistant/girlfriend and having to take a serum to survive, only for it to interact with the swamp and turn him into a shambling monster. As origins go it's nice and self-contained but with openings that could be used to spin off multiple further adventures. Unfortunately not too much is done in this volume with that. The monster seemingly has no coherent thoughts or memories so can neither embark on a quest for vengeance nor try to find a cure for his condition. Ellen appears again only in a special story from Monsters Unleashed as she recovers from her burns and returns to the swamp to deal with the memories. In doing so she comes face to face with what Ted has become, leading to a memorable moment as she demonstrates no fear, but in the regular series she is forgotten. The organisation Ellen works for, later revealed as AIM, don't catch on to what has really happened to Ted and come after the monster again and again. And so all we're left with is the stumbling monster wandering the swamps and influenced by the emotions of those around it.

That said the Man-Thing does demonstrate some interesting ideas such as the ability to literally ooze through any small opening and a touch that burns whenever the recipient demonstrates fear. Visually he's also a good design, even in black and white, and so makes for a series of strong images though I generally prefer Val Mayerik's depiction to Mike Ploog's. However I'm not sure how he displayed in colour - the front cover shows some very similar shades of green being used for both the monster himself and the background swamp. Fortunately the back cover has found some more distinguishing variations of green.

The character took a while to take off, not helped by Savage Tales only publishing one issue for some years. But the following year, after an appearance in Ka-Zar's strip in Astonishing Tales, which isn't particularly memorable in its own right but which does serve to thrash out some of the details of the character, the Man-Thing soon got an ongoing title in the pre-existing Fear, albeit with the title expanded to Adventure into Fear. This series had previously reprinted many monster stories from Marvel's pre-superheroes era, and the choice of this title helped to place the Man-Thing within the sense of a restoration of the non-superhero monsters. This is also reflected in the guest stars that appear or rather don't.

Once we get past the guest appearance in Ka-Zar's strip, there are no further substantial guest appearances included in this volume (although there are some cameos). This is despite the period covering guest appearances in Avengers, Daredevil and Marvel Two-in-One which show that the Man-Thing wasn't completely isolated from the wider Marvel universe. Such a limited interaction as presented here can allow a character to strive and thrive on their own two feet without interruptions, but it can also leave their deficiencies heavily exposed with precious little to fall back on. It's very much the latter effect here and I feel the series could have seriously benefited from either some appearances by familiar faces or else a fully developed supporting cast who actually hang around long enough to make a big enough impact.

The swamp is located in the Everglades in Florida and comes with all the traditional contents of a swamp from fierce crocodiles to hillbillies, as well as being the site for a proposed airport. But it also contains some decidedly fantastical elements. There is a hidden civilisation based around a Fountain of Youth. And the swamp is the site of the Nexus of All Realities, a gateway that links it to many dimensions containing all manner of weird oddities. The Man-Thing has become the guardian of the Nexus, offering the ironic spectacle of such a great responsibility falling upon such a mindless beast.

There's a tendency for the supporting cast to only appear briefly before disappearing. The first notable case is Jennifer Kale, a young amateur witch who develops a psychic link with the Man-Thing but it is subsequently broken. Her brother Andy and their grandfather Joshua, the head of a cult that seek to defend the Earth from the demons found in the Nexus, also appear, as does Jennifer's boyfriend Jaxon, offering some broader mythology but it's not really developed here. However the Kale family would go on to be tied into the continuity of another of Marvel's horror heroes but when I last tried to read a summary of the family history all I could grasp was just how much my head hurt. Elsewhere are two distinctly strange beings who come through the Nexus - Korrek, a barbarian who arrives through a jar of peanut butter, and Howard the Duck. To my surprise Howard is killed off early on and doesn't come back within this volume but his popularity would take him to great heights elsewhere. Later on we meet Richard Rory, a perpetual loser who repeatedly finds himself in the swamp. More than once he seems to hit it off with a woman who is also lost there, only for things to go wrong. However he does land a spot as a night-time radio DJ. The first such woman is Ruth Hart, on the run from a gang, and it at first seems as though she may have staying power but it comes to nothing.

Villains range from the earthly to the fantastic. At the grounded level the Man-Thing's most persistent nemesis is F. A. Schist, an industrialist intent on building an airport in the swamp, which brings him into recurrent conflict with the Man-Thing, including bringing in the scientist Professor Slaughter. Eventually Schist's greed consumes him when he finds the Fountain of Youth and is destroyed by the Man-Thing, but his vengeance seeking widow later comes after the monster. Elsewhere is the first appearance of the serial killer called the Foolkiller, who is seemingly killed off in his first appearance but would later come back. There are also a string of one-off criminals who pass through the swamp and usually come to grief at the hands of the Man-Thing, though things aren't always great for the victims. There's an especially nasty case of this in a two-part text story from Monsters Unleashed where an unsuccessful writer flees after his girlfriend was killed by a mugger only to get caught between a mad father trying to kill his daughter. But things are not always as they seem, as shown early on when the Man-Thing encounters a black man on the run from a racist and jealous sheriff, only to discover disputing claims between them. The more fantastical foes include various magical beings from the Nexus such as Thog the Nether-Spawn, Dakimh the Enchanter and various one-off named and unnamed demons. Or there's the first appearance of the alien Wundarr, a parody of Superman and his origin. A rare trip away from the swamp bring an encounter with ghost pirates led by Captain Fate, doomed to never reach port due to a curse inflicted by a crewmember they abandoned.

Giant-Size Man-Thing may have a title that everyone laughs at, but the first two issues are straightforward serious content, with the only change from the regular series being an increased use of characters from the wider Marvel universe. The first issue sees the Man-Thing battle the Glob, previously seen in the Incredible Hulk, due to the influence of the Cult of Entropy. The second sees a bunch of cameos, most notably from Mister Fantastic, as the Man-Thing gets briefly transported to New York in a partial parody of King Kong. But otherwise these bigger issues are just expanded versions of the normal sort of story for the series, which has now settled into a pattern of some edginess and social commentary wrapped up around monster and magic tales.

Overall this volume may have some imagination to it but it's the execution that is the problem. Ultimately the central character just isn't sufficiently exciting and there's not enough going on around him to make this compelling stuff. Steve Gerber's issues do include a degree of commentary and satire, but this approach can either date all too easily or else sink if the reader does not have the cultural background to spot the targets. What we're left with is a title that begins as a latter-day monster story in the vein of an earlier generation of Marvel that gets crossed with fantasy and absurdity in the hope that something in this mix will congeal. But the result just doesn't work for me.

Essential Monster of Frankenstein volume 1

Essential Monster of Frankenstein volume 1 contains Monster of Frankenstein #1-5 then under the title Frankenstein Monster #6-18, plus Giant-Size Werewolf #2 and material from the magazines Monsters Unleashed #2 & #4-10 and Legion of Monsters #1. It also includes the Monster's entry from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The writing on all the series is mainly split between Gary Friedrich and Doug Moench, with Bill Mantlo contributing the final issue of Frankenstein Monster. The art is by a mixture of mainly Mike Ploog, John Buscema and Val Mayerik, with individual issues by Bob Brown and Don Perlin.

The series opens with a three part adaptation of the original novel combined with a framing sequence set in 1898 as Robert Walton, the great-grandson of the captain of the same name from the novel, leads an expedition to the Arctic locate the Monster's body. However it soon becomes clear the Monster is far from dead. As with the Tomb of Dracula, Monster of Frankenstein takes the famous novel as its starting point, treats it as an account of real events (although unlike Dracula the book itself is never actually mentioned in the comics) and introduces the descendants of some of the characters in it. Indeed the idea goes back even earlier to the original Silver Surfer series where the Surfer clashed with the descendant of Frankenstein himself. The Monster himself is notably different from the classic Universal Pictures Boris Karloff appearance, being closer to the deformed creature of Mary Shelley's text. However as the series and character develop there's an increasing drift towards the Hollywood image of a monster called "Frankenstein" lumbering through fellow monsters and other wild situations. Issue #6 sees the series' title change to Frankenstein Monster, a word order that can satisfy the popular use of "Frankenstein" for the Monster rather than the creator but without upsetting those who are aware of the distinction. And although it varies a bit with the different artists, there are times when the depiction of the Monster gets much closer to the traditional Hollywood portrayal.

But despite these drifts the series broadly remains faithful to Shelley's vision, with the original novel adapted quite well and even adhering to the narrative structure of telling it in flashback, with the narrators here consisting of the younger Captain Walton and the Monster himself. We get an additional tale of the creature's final exploits around the start of the nineteenth century and overall we get a rather sympathetic portrayal of the poor creature brought to life in a world that hates and fears him, rejected from birth by his "father" and cursed to wander the world, not even dying but entering suspended animation twice, once after the events of Shelley's novel and another time in issue #12 when the creature is moved from 1898 to the present day. The series doesn't pull its punches about the grittiness of the situation, with the Monster killing a number of people and animals in the course of his wanderings, and almost everybody he befriends soon comes to grief.

A recurring theme is the Monster's relations with the Frankenstein family. Having failed to kill Victor Frankenstein with his own hands, he seeks vengeance upon the heirs. In 1898 he eventually meets Vincent Frankenstein, a great-great nephew of his creator, but is denied his chance when a maid kills her master for neglecting his wife. Unknown to the Monster, Vincent is not the last of the Frankensteins as his wife has died giving birth to a boy. In the present day we meet Veronica Frankenstein, a descendant, who helps the Monster by repairing his larynx, thus restoring his power of speech. It seems as though nearly two centuries of hate and bitterness have come to an end with this reconciliation. However the very last page of the comic series (though not the volume) sees the introduction of Baroness Victoria von Frankenstein, who states she is the great-granddaughter of his creator. How she can be a direct descendant when the Monster killed Victor's only wife on their wedding night isn't explained here (and let's not get into the quagmire of counting generations). The Official Handbook entry for the Monster states she is heiress to the family title but not a direct descendant so it remains to be seen what her connection is or why Vincent and Veronica were seemingly unaware of her line, believing themselves to be the last of the Frankensteins.

This isn't the only sign where the series's continuity lapses a bit. This is particularly noticeable around issue #12 when the Monster is taken to Vincent Frankenstein's London townhouse in 1898 but leaves what looks like an eastern European castle but appears to be located in northern Europe (although a later issue establishes the Monster had re-entered the ocean in Switzerland - a landlocked country). The Monster falls into suspended animation for many decades, during which what appears to be the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, or an even earlier conflict, is fought. When the Monster is revived in the present day, the details of his resurrection are glossed over in the pages of his own series, with readers directed to issues of the magazine Monsters Unleashed, and the placement order of in the volume keeps those tales back until the end. Meanwhile the 1898 encounter with Dracula in issues #7-9 is at variance with the vampire's early continuity, and may have contributed to considerable confusion in his series about just how long he had been inactive for. And up until this encounter the Monster is able to speak but then his larynx is torn. Yet ten issues later Veronica Frankenstein performs an operation to allow him to speak and he's treated as though this is the first time he's been able to do this.

The X-Men had briefly encountered an alien android who was presented as having been the basis for the Monster. The Official Handbook entry mentions the android only for long enough to establish it as a separate character without going into detail now that the novel had been accepted as a real account. Otherwise the volume contains no mention of any other appearances of either Frankensteins or beings like the Monster. But this doesn't mean the series exists in isolation from the rest of Marvel's output. But despite spending some time in New York City there are no appearances by the most familiar superheroes. Instead the Monster crosses over with other characters from the horror output. The trinity of Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster and the Werewolf have become commonplace not just in Marvel but across the horror genre in general and so it's entirely appropriate that the Monster encounters Dracula here, even if it is at the expense of understanding the vampire's continuity, and goes on to meet with the Werewolf. The fight with Dracula is by far the more significant as a gypsy girl who has befriended the Monster is transformed into a vampire and tears his larynx, ending his ability to speak and so altering the dynamic of subsequent encounters. The story is slightly reminiscent of an earlier issue in which a young woman befriends the Monster only to turn out to be a werewolf, a fact he doesn't realise until after he has slain the beast.

The Monster wanders afar with a sense of nobility, often willing to help others in danger in the hope that he can find fiends and a sense of identity, but invariably with tragic consequences. Some of the people he saves reject him in terror. Others turn out to be, or are turned into, dangerous beings that have to be stopped. Others still become friends but are soon killed. The Monster is a truly tragic figure, lacking a clear identity and made up of various bits and pieces. Unfortunately the series becomes the same.

The early issues show a coherency as the Monster is revived and sets out to find the last remaining Frankenstein, with the late nineteenth century setting helping to contribute to a neo-Gothic feeling. However there are some strange individual moments, such the giant spider that feeds on souls and resides in the German Castle Frankenstein. Vincent Frankenstein is a creation much closer to the Hollywood legend version of his great-great uncle rather than the literary portrayal, complete with a laboratory in a castle (also named "Castle Frankenstein" though it's in the United Kingdom) and a deformed hunchback servant who doesn't always agree with what his master is up to. Once in the present day the situations become more random as the Monster encounters and fights, variously, a Satanic cult, a bizarre creature formed by an accident in genetic engineering, the shady International Crime Organization Nexus (ICON) and the Beserker android.

A major flaw in the presentation of the series, reproduced in this volume, is the holding back of the details of the Monster's revival in the present day for the series Monsters Unleashed. As a result this volume leaps forward and backwards within the Monster's chronology, and the revival tale doesn't feel strong enough to justify using it in a separate and non-Code series. We get a rambling tale (which, on its original publication, skipped an issue and so took many months to tell) in which a neuroscientist has invented a means of transplanting brains between bodies in order to survive but gets transferred into the Monster's body when his student assistant foolishly assumes this is the solution to dying of cancer. An accident results in the scientist's brain being eventually transferred into the body of a mouse, with the mouse's brain temporarily controlling the Monster and accidentally crushing the scientist. Throw in the scientist killing the assistant, a bit of zombie magic thrown in to allow the assistant to fight the scientist even after death and a trapeze artist whose brain and body also get transferred around, and the whole thing just becomes one chaotic mess. There's a few elements that would have been barred from appearing in a Code approved comic such as the assistant coming back as a zombie and possibly the basics of transferring brains, but the story is so weak the use of such elements just doesn't justify taking a key part of the Monster's story away from his own series. The rest of the Monsters Unleashed stories are better with one tale of a man who believes himself to be ugly after he was rejected by a woman and so donned an ugly mask and recruited other "freak" outcasts for his revenge. However the revelation of his real face causes the outcasts to turn on him. The Monster saves the woman and hopes she might become his friend as he carries her unconscious form home, protecting her on multiple occasions, but when she regains consciousness she rejects him and flees.

The final two stories in the volume offer a glimmer of hope of a better approach. The last in Monsters Unleashed sees the Monster sneak aboard a train where he is befriended by a female hobo. They discover the train is a decoy for a Presidential trip and get caught up in assassination attempts. Tragically the girl is killed when the train is blown up, leaving the Monster once more all alone. The story from the sole issue of Legion of Monsters sees the Monster stumble into a costume party where he is accepted by all and falls for a beautiful woman, but he is tricked into following one man whilst another kills the girl and frames the Monster. He deals with the killer but once more he is left alone and friendless with others assuming the worst of him.

The Monster is an unfortunate creature who was created with great hopes but was assembled from bits and pieces drawn from a wide variety of sources and wandering about in search of an end to its agony and in search of a purpose in life. Unfortunately some of that description also applies to the series in general. It starts off amazingly well but gradually loses its way. Perhaps the turning point is the encounter with Dracula which shows the problems of the Monster interacting with the wider Marvel universe in 1898, but most of the stories set in the present day feel somewhat aimless. The Monster lacks a name but has a strong identity and a nobility that deserved stronger material than this.

Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 1

Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 1 collects issues #1-25 of Tomb of Dracula plus Werewolf by Night #15 and a story from Giant-Size Chillers #1. The latter comic was a contemporary of Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1 and Giant-Size Super-Stars #1, an early, anthology approach to the Giant-Sizes before a switch to individual named series. (Confusingly less than a year later the title and numbering were reused for a brief anthology series of short stories.) The early Tomb of Dracula issues are written by Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin and Gardner Fox before Marv Wolfman begins a long run, and he also writes the Werewolf by Night and Giant-Size Chillers issues. Gene Colan draws all the Tomb of Dracula and Giant-Size Chillers issues whilst Mike Ploog handles Werewolf by Night.

I read the original Bram Stoker novel Dracula when I was about eleven or twelve but on reflection this was almost certainly an abridged version - not only was it stocked in a school library with pupils as young as ten but it came in a double edition flip-book with The Phantom of the Opera and I don't remember the resulting edition being enormous. So I suspect some of the themes of the novel were either stripped out or sufficiently subtle that I didn't recognise them, leaving something of a traditional adventure story. But of course Dracula's fame also stems from endless movies where the public domain status of the novel has meant complete freedom for studios to do whatever they like with the character without having to have regard for Stoker's original vision. Here we get something close to the Stoker novel but toned down with the overt sexual themes absent.

At the surface level Dracula's main focus is upon a supply of blood and hatred of the human race. However it can't be denied that many of his victims are female and there's a strong element of the predatory male in the approach as shown by the cover to issue #1 which is used for the volume as a whole. However Dracula also at times acts to help women, taking steps to tackle the ghost haunting one, and at other times pouncing on attackers or even empowering a dying woman so she can take her revenge upon her killer. Dracula himself is a rare example of a villainous title character; normally it's rare for such series to last because of the difficulty in having the villain win or escape all the time, but here the main character has a strong presence, intelligence and charisma that lures the reader back for more. As the series progresses it's established that the struggle against vampires in general and Dracula in particular has lasted a long time, so it can be seen as part of a great epic.

The series is primarily set in Europe with occasional shifts to the east. Oddly there's hardly any reference as to which country Transylvania is located in or the difficulty in travelling across the Iron Curtain to Romania. It is supposedly the present day, even if London is full of the fog, cobbled streets and widespread use of Cockney and "bloody" that bears more resemblance to an ignorant Hollywood executive's conception than reality. As a latter day sequel to a late Victorian gothic horror novel there's something vaguely appropriate about that, but as a Londoner all too often it feels as though American writers are succumbing to cliché. The series is set in the regular Marvel universe but doesn't actually overlap on it much. The only characters to appear from elsewhere are Jack Russell the Werewolf and Topaz, his mysterious magical friend, thanks to a crossover between the two titles. Otherwise Dracula did pop up in the first issue of Giant-Size Spider-Man which came out towards the end of the run contained in this volume, but that isn't included here. Since the series is primarily set outside the States it's not too surprising that there aren't many guest stars piling in from the superhero titles. Instead the focus is upon the title character and those who seek to stop him.

Amongst his opponents are a group of vampire hunters drawn together. Some other characters are either taken directly from the novel or are descended from people in it. Introduced at the start is Frank Drake, a modern day member of the Dracula family - whether he's directly descended from the vampiric Count is a precise detail that changes with the writers - and the heir to Castle Dracula. His immediate family have altered their surname to escape the associations with the novel - here treated as an account of actual events - and the resurrection of the Count has quite a chilling effect upon him. When exploring the castle he's inherited, his friend Clifton Graves stumbles across a coffin containing a skeleton with a stake in it; removing the stake revives Count Dracula who hypnotises Graves into being his servant. Drake's girlfriend Jeanie is bitten by Dracula and becomes a vampire herself; subsequently Drake is forced to destroy her with a stake and sunlight and the horror of having had to "kill" her remains with him for a long time.

A similar horror of having to destroy a woman close to him comes to Quincy Harker. He is the baby born at the end of the book, son of Jonathan Harker and his wife Mina and named after Quincy Morris, who died in what appeared to be the final confrontation with Dracula. Trained by Abraham van Helsing to carry on the fight, Quincy Harker has spent nearly his entire life fighting vampires, including Dracula (when a retcon has him active for much of the intervening years), and though now elderly and confined to a wheelchair he continues to guide the younger vampire hunters. In another dark moment Harker's daughter Edith is captured by Dracula and although freed she has in the meantime been turned into a vampire, her greatest fear. Rather than face an undead existence as one, she throws herself from a great height to disable her body and Quincy is forced to perform the brutal process to destroy her.

Rachel van Helsing is spared from having to perform such a horrific action on one she cares for, but her life has been no less tragic. The granddaughter of Dracula's greatest foe, she has experienced tragedy throughout her life as Dracula has killed many of her family. Despite this she never gives in and even at her worst moment when she and Dracula are trapped in snowswept mountains and each has to keep the other alive in order to survive, she is still determined to destroy him even if it comes at the cost of her own life. A heavily serious person, she does nevertheless find comfort with Drake. She is usually accompanied by her servant Taj Nitall who is a super strong mute Indian, a stereotype more acceptable forty years ago than now. Taj is loyal and incredible durable, surviving some pretty violent encounters with Dracula and/or his hypnotised henchmen, but there isn't a great deal revealed about him. At the end he receives a message from India and rushes there, to see his hated estranged wife and be told their son is dying but the subplot isn't resolved within this volume.

By far the best known of the vampire hunters introduced here is Blade the Vampire-Slayer, debuting about a quarter of a century before Buffy. Although he's a little underused there's a strong background given for him and one that is actually quite detached from Dracula, making it easy to spin him off into adventures elsewhere. His mother was attacked by a vampire whilst pregnant and died; he now seeks revenge but has yet to find the specific vampire. At one point he is bitten by Dracula but Harker discovers that Blade has an immunity due to his heritage. The character adds a degree of dynamism but doesn't last too long, eventually leaving the group to focus on find his own mother's killer.

As well as the nasty moments that have affected almost all of the vampire hunters the series contains some other quite dark moments, such as when Jason Faust, an embittered businessmen now paralysed and trapped in an iron lung, is bitten and turned into a vampire. Unable to move to sate his thirst, he can only lie in pain and await the sunlight which will destroy him. Later Dracula comes across a scheming man pushing his wife off a cliff so he and his mistress can inherit her money; Dracula reaches the wife as she lies dying and turns her into a vampire so that she can seek her revenge. On another occasion he feigns a road accident to get close to a housewife who three days later heads home and bites both her husband and their two young children. Not all of this is shown on panel but it's pretty heavy stuff and I'm amazed to see a series as old as this was published under the auspices of the Comics Code Authority. Dracula is also fairly brutal at times, including setting and detonating explosives on a ship, leaving his hypnotised henchman Clifton Graves behind to die.

But Graves survives and resurfaces as part of a new plot, though he seemingly dies again in it. One of the longest running subplots involves Doctor Sun, a Chinese scientist who has had his brain removed from his body and attached to computers, making for an extremely intelligent and powerful foe. Requiring and constant supply of blood to sustain him, he searches hard for the perfect vampire agent who can obtain the blood without suspicion of ulterior motives. A succession of cutaways show his agents, mainly based on the coast of Northern Ireland, searching and testing potential recruits before eventually locating Dracula. It's nice to see Northern Ireland for once being presented in fiction as an ordinary place and a reasonable location for an out of the way testing facility rather than fiction just focusing on the Troubles - given these issues were published in the period 1972 through 1974 this use is oddly a particularly encouraging example of hope. The Doctor Sun storyline also allows the series to briefly present Dracula as the victim and underdog, making his escape and survival less awkward.

It didn't take too long before a potential spin-off character appears. Lilith, Dracula's Daughter, is introduced in Giant-Size Chillers #1 but there is no familial bond between father and daughter owing to his treatment of her mother even before he became a vampire all those centuries ago. Lilith's own powers and abilities are slightly different, thanks to the gypsies who raised her, and she has no fear of sunlight or crucifixes but she also has the power to be reborn in the body of an innocent woman who hates her father. She proposes an alliance with her own father but he rejects it and leaves her to seek her own spin-off appearances elsewhere are part of Marvel's then thriving horror line.

The crossover with Werewolf by Night is hard to assess. In fiction in many mediums it's not uncommon to have Dracula mixing with other gothic monsters and the most common two are a werewolf and the monster of Frankenstein. So it's hard to deny that the Werewolf is a very appropriate first guest star (and this crossover predates even the encounter with Spider-Man over in Giant-Size Spider-Man). However the main focus of the crossover is upon fleshing out the backstory of the Werewolf, revealing the family curse, and it's tied into an encounter at Castle Dracula. Whilst this doesn't (at this stage at least) have much impact on the rest of Dracula's series, it does feel rather awkward to be tying the origin of one of the characters to another. There's no particular reason that I can see for the Werewolf to need such a connection and it if anything undermines the character's effectiveness. The crossover is also weakened by the failure to adequately introduce both the Werewolf/Jack Russell and Topaz to Dracula readers - the latter character may be deliberately mysterious but as presented here she could just as easily be the victim of poor explanations. I wonder if Werewolf by Night readers found the presence of Frank Drake and Rachel van Helsing equally confusing.

Overall this volumes shows a distinctly different type of series to Marvel's superhero fare and it works well without running for the traditional guest stars, villains or locations. Gene Colan's artwork always had a distinct style of its own but here is some his best ever work. Most of the issues are inked by Tom Palmer who complements Colan's pencils well but even the handful of issues handled by Vince Colletta hold up well - perhaps Colletta's effectiveness depended very much upon both the penciller and genre and here his style worked well. Marv Wolfman's scripts are also strong and compelling but there are some continuity errors noticeable when the issues are read altogether; it seems Wolfman was either implicitly or explicitly changing details only briefly established by the trio of writers on the handful of issues before him. As well as making Drake a direct descendent of Dracula we also get a regenerating castle that is burnt down by the local villagers in the first issue but later on appears as intact as ever. Initially it seems Dracula has lain in his coffin since the 1890s and the events of the Stoker novel but later on it's established he was last killed just three years earlier. Wolfman was hardly the first or last writer to seek to impose their own continuity upon a series but it's normally rare for Marvel series to make such changes without explicitly addressing what had come before. A rather odder change comes in the crossover when Drake and van Helsing take off in a helicopter in the Werewolf by Night issue but in the follow-up Tomb of Dracula issue Drake has been replaced by a pilot with no obvious time to change over.

A number of issues reference another series called Dracula Lives! This was a magazine format series outside the Comics Code Authority which was a predominantly standalone series that told tales of Dracula throughout his long history, including an adaptation of the novel. Although the occasional reference to events shown there can leave the reader wanting to see more, it doesn't detract from the readability of this volume. It takes a little time but once the team of Wolfman and Colan is in place the result is a spectacular gripping and biting series that remains true to both the source material and many of the popular conceptions of vampires but which also manages to stay engaging for the modern age.

Essential Ghost Rider volume 1 - creator labels

As noted in my review of Essential Ghost Rider volume 1, there are a lot of creators involved so I've created this separate post to carry all the labels for them.