Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 4

Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 4 is a change from the norm, containing material in narrative rather than publication order from Tomb of Dracula Magazine #2 to #6, Dracula Lives! #1 to #13 and Frankenstein Monster #7 to #9. Bonus material includes some pin-ups from the magazines and also from a calendar, unused pencilled artwork from the multi-part story planned for Tomb of Dracula #70 to #72 before it was condensed into a single giant-size issue, and finally a couple of one-page stories. The Dracula stories are written by a wide range of writers including Marv Wolfman, Roger McKenzie, Peter Gillis, Gerry Conway, Doug Moench, Gardner Fox, Roy Thomas, Tony Isabella, Mike Friedrich, Jim Shooter, Steve Gerber, Len Wein and Rick Margopolous. The art is by Gene Colan, John Buscema, Neal Adams, Vicente Alcazar, Frank Robbins, Steve Gan, Sonny Trinidad, Yong Montano, Dick Ayers, Alan Weiss, Frank Springer, George Evans, Tony Dezuniga, Paul Gulacy, Rich Buckler, Jim Starlin, Alfonso Font, Mike Ploog, Frank Robbins, Alfredo Alcala, George Tuska, Val Mayerik and Ernie Chua. The Frankenstein Monster issues are all written by Mike Friedrich and drawn by John Buscema. With such a large number of creators there are not one but two separate labels posts.

One of the less often commented features about reprints is that they aren't always exactly the same as the original publication. Cutting pages or even individual panels to fit a smaller page count or different size format and modifying footnotes to reference other reprints are the best known but there's also a long history of amending dialogue and visuals to suit different sensibilities. Just to add to the confusion the state of the archives isn't always the best so the material available or ordered up is sometimes identical to the original printing, sometimes a modified version from a later reprint and occasionally an earlier prepublication one that was modified before it first went to the printers but with the unaltered version hanging around in the files. The Essentials have had a mixed record on source material over the years, with the earlier volumes often relying on other reprints whilst the later ones developed better techniques for going straight back to the source material. But even then some things were still changed. Usually these changes aren't too well documented but this volume, released almost at the mid point of the Essentials, has had some changes made to the artwork to cover up nudity, especially on the first story with Lilith.

Were this not known about it wouldn't affect readability at all - the changes focus on hiding nudity, mainly by extending existing clothing. (There are some comparisons between the original and modified panels at The Groovy Age of Horror: Censored Essentials? - be warned the nudity is clear.) Marvel of course has every legal right to do this (the US doesn't have the concept of creators' moral rights to object to tampering with the work) and whether this was the company's own decision or a response to the modern standards of distributors and booksellers is unknown, but the alternative may have been no reprint at all. But it's a pity that it was deemed necessary to make the modifications as it does ultimately mean this isn't quite an exact reprint (and that means even more when most of the material was in black and white to start with). And the market for reprints of old Dracula stories shouldn't have a problem with it. Certainly there's other material with pretty adult themes such as pirates attacking a village, including rape (the word is actually used) and their female captain is shown using sex to beguile and control her crew, with one crewmember shown being rewarded and later others promised "Hellyn's reward will be given to all who score with a thrust!" when facing Dracula. Yet despite this the story finds itself unable to say "bastard" and has to use the euphemism "fatherless dog".

As for what's actually been printed here, this is very much a mishmash collection of material. It starts off with a couple of tales from Tomb of Dracula Magazine, continuing where the last volume left off, before running through a whole set of historical adventures from the various magazines and another character's comic, then finishes off with the present day tales from Dracula Lives! magazine that ran parallel to the early issues of the Tomb of Dracula comic. The result of all this is that the volume jumps around. Reading between the lines it becomes clear that Marvel didn't really know what to do with the ongoing adventures of Dracula now that the 1970s horror fad had passed and Marv Wolfman had left the character (and was in the process of leaving the company altogether). Consequently it's unsurprising that the magazine ended after just six issues and there's nothing in the early stories that suggests any real direction with the most significant development being an ending of sorts as Lilith is separated from the body of Angel O'Hara and then finds she is unable to kill her father. The other early tale is a more typical piece of what is to come, with Dracula preying on an innocent woman, here a ballerina, and transforming her. She eventually commits suicide and is not the only female victim to do so in these pages.

The historic adventures of Dracula show no development at all, being just a succession of tales in different historic periods. Reordering them chronologically helps to disguise the lack of direction but it also exposes some inconsistencies in the basic vampire mythology, most notably as to whether a transformed victim needs to wait three nights or not before rising again, whether Dracula needs to spend the day in a coffin full of Transylvanian earth or not, and whether he needs to be invited in before he can enter a public dwelling. Each of these rules is both adhered to and broken throughout the course of these tales, with Dracula's precise vulnerability to crosses also fluctuating somewhat. This just reinforces the mess these tales are.

By and large the historic adventures either fill in the core history of Dracula, although the adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel is conspicuously absent, or else place the vampire in a particular period setting as he wanders across Europe and occasionally beyond, but always ultimately returning home. There's a variety of stock characters and situations including hordes of Turkish warriors, witches, pirates, court nobles, American Civil War soldiers, cowboys, gangsters and wartime Germans. And there are attempts to do more with the formula than simply preying on women and evading their menfolk. But something just doesn't feel right about these stories. Dracula is ultimately a late Victorian Gothic creation, even if he was named after a historical figure from the fifteenth century and has since had that historical character fused into the fictional one. Seeing him placed in other historical settings just doesn't feel right and few of the tales are able to really rise above the limitations. As a result the only historic stories of any real significance are the early ones which tell how Vlad the Impaler became a vampire in the first place and also how the centuries long war between Dracula and the Van Helsings began. There's also a particularly dark tale as Dracula encounters and brings down the notorious real life serial killer Countess Elizabeth Bathory, here depicted with all the gruesomeness of bathing in the blood of virgins to restore and maintain her youth. It's a particularly dark tale that shows Dracula up against a woman who is immune to his bite, forcing him to resort to more devious methods to bring her down, making for a good homage to what is believed to have been one of the influences upon Stoker. Otherwise these tales are really just back-up filler that don't work when collected together in their own right. Early on a text piece entitled "Bloodline: A Probable Outline Of The Career Of Count Vlad Dracula" summarises all the adventures and material from various flashbacks and that contains probably everything that could be needed to cover his historic career.

The three Frankenstein Monster issues are set in 1898 and appear to be Dracula's first appearance after the Stoker novel, which is given a very brief one page summary here. The issues show Frankenstein's monster on a search for the last of his creator's family and encountering a travelling gypsy circus on the way but one of the gypsies has ulterior motives. It leads to a rather dull conflict between two of the greatest horror creations who each deserved so much more. As is so often the case with these tales we get Dracula preying on innocent women in an isolated settlement and clashing with the local men, with some suspicious townsfolk thrown in who bring a gruesome fate to the gypsies. We also get what is becoming an increasingly routine occurrence whereby Dracula ends the story seemingly slain but his killer lacks either the knowledge or time to perform the necessary actions to destroy the corpse before the vampire can be brought back to life. Though we sometimes see Dracula resurrected, such as here when an old gypsy woman tricks the monster into unsealing a tomb, the succession of deaths and unexplained resurrections work to undermine the overall impact of the stories by disrupting the narrative flow and removing the impact of danger and destruction to Dracula.

The final part of the volume is only slightly more coherent, being taken up with the present day adventures from Dracula Lives! and so at least publication and chronological orders coincide. But apart from a vague narrative as Dracula comes to the States in an unsuccessful search for his old foe Cagliostro before heading back to Europe, this is much the same as before. Dracula wanders through a succession of scenarios, ranging from becoming addicted to drugs after biting a junkie to a battle with an eighteenth century man who has been transformed into a stone gargoyle that only comes to life at night. A visit to New Orleans sees the Zombie passing by but there's no interaction between the two horror characters and instead the focus is on an encounter with Marie Le Vau, the "Voodoo Queen of New Orleans". Elsewhere in Hollywood Dracula challenges a has-been actor who has been portraying him and suffering delusions that make him believe he is the actual vampire. Dracula's nastiest streak comes to the fore at times as he sets traps, especially when he bites a terrorist and sets him up to be exposed to sunlight without realising what will happen. A particularly favourite trick is to set a foe up by biting an expected acquaintance in advance who in turn becomes a vampire in time to attack. A number of women are drawn to Dracula over the course of these stories and he will sometimes be drawn to them in return but ultimately will never settle with any of them, leaving them lonely and, in one case, suicidal. The biggest addition to the mythology is the Montesi Formula, a spell that can destroy vampires permanently which leads Dracula to risk invading the Vatican in order to dispose of both Cardinal Montesi and the formula before it can be used permanently. Otherwise these tales are just more of the same.

This volume primarily serves as a companion piece to the three earlier ones, collecting together material from the supporting series and guest appearances that never fully fitted alongside the ongoing narrative in the monthly comic. And this patchwork shows even without being reordered into a chronological framework. There's no development or recurring cast beyond Dracula, whilst a lot of the situations bear a strong similarity to one another. All in all this volume is pretty inessential.

Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 3

Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 3 consists of issues #50 to #70 of the regular series and #1 to #4 of Tomb of Dracula Magazine. Almost everything is written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Gene Colan bar one issue of the Magazine which is written by Roger McKenzie and another which is drawn by Steve Ditko.

The volume opens with a fairly well known encounter with the Silver Surfer as he gets caught up in the internal machinations of the satanic cult that Dracula now heads. It's all rather underwhelming and certainly not the great classic of legend, an early warning sign that perhaps Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan are starting to run out of creative energy. This feeling persists through the next several issues as other elements are hurried through such as the quick dismissal of Blade's doppelganger but fortunately there's a distinct upturn as the series heads towards its climax.

There are a few other guest appearances on the way with mixed impacts. Topaz, from the Werewolf by Night series, pops up as a tool of a very particular foe who wants Dracula lured to a special location. Daimon Hellstrom the Son of Satan shows up for an issue in order to resurrect Blade and free him from his doppelganger. Hellstrom doesn't hang around for the final showdown with Deacon Frost after which both Blade and Hannibal King broadly depart from the series with their mission of vengeance complete, though Blade shows up later in an issue that feels like it's a standby fill-in as Blade and Musenda reunite to save a woman from an odd curse that links her to a vampire, alternating between day and night. Also reaching completion is Harold H. Harold as he finishes his novel about Dracula, which is also adapted as a play and, potentially, a film, and he finally gets to go on a date with Aurora. He later appears at a showing of the play having convinced an actress he can get her a part in the film but Dracula is also in the audience and it doesn't go well for Harold.

One of the key themes of the volume is religion, with Dracula's position as head a satanic cult leading to encounters with both those from below and those from above. Early on, a mysterious being confronts Dracula only to die in the event but his spirit rises and it becomes clear he is connected to Christ via a portrait with glowing eyes. It's a very bold move to all but explicitly say that Dracula has encountered an angel, but it's also one that makes perfect sense given the power Christian artefacts have in vampire mythology. Later on, Dracula's son Janus is resurrected and artificially accelerated in age to that of a young man through fusion with the angel's spirit. And this leads to a confrontation that fuses both of the biggest themes.

The other big theme of the run is that of families, although there isn't much exploration of the most prominent direct relationship between Dracula and his descendant Frank Drake. Instead the emphasis at one end is on Rachel van Helsing and her relationship with Quincy Harker, as her father figure suffers a succession of heart attacks and becomes ever more desperate to complete his mission before his health finally gives out. Meanwhile Dracula is almost domesticated, now married to the cultist Domini and seeing a son, named Janus, born on the night of December 24th. In a display of a story element I have never liked in comics published at Christmas, Janus's birth brings peace and goodwill to the vicinity, causing the immediate fighting to end and foes to let one another go. Janus also brings joy and peace to both his parents, who reflect upon their pasts of loneliness and awkward relationships with the rest of their families. But families come in many forms and not all relationships are in good form. Dracula has a further encounter with his daughter Lilith but she will do nothing to help him in his most desperate hour. The Church of the Damned cult is another form of family but one with internal hatreds as Anton Lupeski plots to overthrow and destroy Dracula, now that the birth of a son means the vampire is no longer needed. In the showdown tragedy strikes when Dracula evades the bullet and it instead kills Janus. Lupeski is soon disposed of but Domini calls an end to the immediate violence, channelling the painting of Christ. Subsequently she performs a ritual that resurrects Janus in fusion with the dead angel's spirit, and the result is a young man torn between filial duty and a destiny to kill Dracula.

This leads to confrontations between father and son but before long both are lured to a strange recreation of a Roman arena, along with both Frank Drake and Topaz, where a demon tries to get Dracula and Janus to fight to the death but fails and they instead turn on the demon. Dracula then finds himself transported to Hell where they encounter Satan himself. Satan toys with Dracula, turning him into a human once more and casting him back into the world where both he and the vampire hunters now face a very different set of circumstances and morality. He now wanders the Earth discovering he now has the all too mortal concerns of money, food and injury to cope with whilst they must question whether they can kill a human man who is no longer a threat. But there's one hunter known as the Cowboy for whom the answer is clear-cut. Dracula continues on a quest to be restored to vampiredom, but is spurned by the only vampire he deems worthy to transform him, Lilith. Dracula then turns to Janus and persuades his son to send him to the one place where he might find restoration, Transylvania. But here too he finds rejection as his subjects and vampires now serve a new master, Torgo, and reject Dracula for having turned his back on the old ways. In turn Dracula is forced to embrace his foes even more as he turns to God for help and crucifixes for protection, but it's all the manipulation of Satan who has done all this to break him. Dracula is restored to vampire form as the climax of the series looms.

The finale sees Dracula confront Torgo, who was transformed into a vampire by the same woman as Dracula, leading to a battle to reclaim lordship over the vampires. But it's a hollow victory as Dracula contemplates just what it is he rules over and then comes the real showdown. Quincy Harker is dying and confronts Dracula one final time in the castle in Transylvania in vengeance for his wife and daughter. It's a dramatic climax to the series and Quincy is the natural choice for the final battle; however there's a loophole left open when explosives in Quincy's wheelchair detonate before he can take the correct ritual steps to destroy the corpse. All that is left is for Quincy's final letter to help Rachel rediscover herself, whilst Janus is unmerged from the angel and restored to infant form. The series ends with a look back at the man that Dracula was.

This is one of the rare cases from the era when a title was given enough warning to enable it to wrap up the story within its own pages; imagine the awkwardness if such an intense and involved conclusion had to be rush packed into a single issue of Marvel Two-in-One. There's a real sense of closure as Dracula is restored to his former glory just in time for the final showdown, whilst hope for the future is left with the surviving cast members. If the story of Marvel's Dracula had ended here it would have gone out on a truly spectacular high. However it turns out this wasn't quite the ending of the title that it at first seems but rather a clearing of the deck for a change in format.

The switch to a black and white magazine format is a surprise; it seems there was another attempt by Marvel to drive into the horror magazine format. If the colour comic was cancelled for this reason then it was in vain. The four magazines reproduced here (minus some back-up stories not featuring Dracula) just show a rambling chaos as Dracula is once more revived in a confusing tale of magic and gets caught up in a mixture of tales that owe more to Lovecraftian monster horror or the film The Exorcist than to the traditional gothic tales. Nor does the classic creative team survive long. Issue #2 is drawn by Steve Ditko but his style is just all wrong for the mush mash of content, being far too traditional cartoony for a tale of Satanists, demonic possession, a monster impregnating an innocent woman and her brother becoming an incubus, draining the life forces of others and turning into a visual link to a psychedelic dimension. Another story tells of a woman surviving having her blood drained by Dracula and later giving birth, only for her daughter to somehow remotely drain Dracula's blood supply and act like she is possessed. A back up is told in the pictures and text caption format from the perspective of an art dealer as he relates how a promising young artist full of hope and optimism was drastically changed by an encounter with Dracula. Although there are some recurring themes of women being twisted and broken, there is no clear direction with the group of vampire hunters now separated and scattered and only a brief appearance by Inspector Chelm of Scotland Yard to even hint at any recurring adversaries for Dracula. And then after three issues Wolfman leaves the title. His immediate successor is Roger McKenzie who goes back to the gothic roots of the character but at the expense of chronology by telling a tale of Dracula preying on a family living in a lighthouse in the early twentieth century. Although the magazine continued beyond this volume, the material here just shows a great waste of an opportunity as the title stumbles around with no clear identity or direction. Wolfman had had an incredible run on the colour comic, writing no less than sixty-four consecutive issues without interruption and giving it a strong identity and direction, so it's a pity that his final stories are such a forgettable mess. Colan's achievement of drawing all seventy issues is even more impressive and so it's a shame that for whatever reason the magazine stories weren't all drawn by him or that the alternative art just wasn't suitable for the series's style.

Ideally this volume would have ended with the end of the colour comic and left the magazines for another day. Or else Wolfman and Colan would have left the character at this stage and gone out on a high. This would have left this third volume as a return to greatness, overcoming the turgidness both in the earliest issues here and in the second volume, and restoring the series to a high point in time for the climax. Unfortunately the magazine stories undo all this good work, see the character resurrected all too quickly, Wolfman leaving at a bad low and the volume itself ending midflow. Normally the Essentials are constrained by page lengths that give limited manoeuvre for choosing end points but the first three volumes came out in the space of barely eleven months and it should have been possible to pace them so that the third ended with the end of the comic and kept the magazines back for the fourth. Instead the end of this volumes just crashes down after all the good that came before it.

Essential Doctor Strange volume 3

Essential Doctor Strange volume 3 collects issues #1-29 of his second series plus Annual #1 and the crossover issues of Tomb of Dracula #44-45. Bonus material includes Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries for Doctor Strange, his Sanctum Sanctorum, Eternity and Dormammu, plus a pin-up of Doctor Strange and Dracula from a Marvel calendar and an extra page used in a previous reprint of Tomb of Dracula #45. Most issues are written by Steve Englehart with shorter runs by Marv Wolfman, Jim Starlin and Roger Stern, and individual writing or plotting contributions by Frank Brunner and Roy Thomas. The art sees runs by Frank Brunner, Gene Colan and, right at the end, Tom Sutton, plus other contributions by Alan Weiss, Alfredo P. Alcala, Rudy Nebres, Dan Adkins, Jim Starlin and Al Milgrom. One issue sees a framing sequence around a reprint of Strange Tales #126-127 drawn by Steve Ditko and scripted by Stan Lee. The annual is written by Englehart and co-plotted & drawn by P. Craig Russell whilst the Tomb of Dracula issues are written by Wolfman and drawn by Colan. That's a lot of creators so there's a separate post for some of the labels.

Doctor Strange is a character and series that a lot of writers have struggled with over the years. Some seem to have very little idea as to what to do with the character beyond yet more rounds of battles with the likes of Baron Mordo, Dormammu, Nightmare and other foes from the original stories along with yet more encounters with Eternity for the sake of it, continuing to wallow in the legacy of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee but only really offering more homages of the same old. Others try to ignore all those elements and instead thrust the good doctor into new environments, taking him away from all of that but again it can be ultimately unsatisfying. Part of the problem is the lack of clarity around Doctor Strange's powers with his power level especially volatile to the point that stories can be resolved with deus ex machina endings. It's unsurprising to find that in this volume there are multiple attempts to contain his power, whether by temporarily depowering him whilst in a specific environment or else overtly trimming his wings when he gives up the role of Sorcerer Supreme, although he gets it back later on under a new writer.

The early issues do a lot for the mythology with the introduction of Silver Dagger, the fanatical ex-Cardinal who has become on of Doctor Strange's most recurring of foes, but otherwise we get an epic retread of familiar themes. But there's a real effort to build on what has come before rather than merely retelling the same kind of adventures. There's a return of Dormammu but as a reincarnation no longer bound by his previous vow to spare Earth and so opening up new dangers. At the same time we learn a great deal more about the Dark Dimension including the revelation that Clea is the daughter of Umar and Orini, and thus the true heir to the throne. Elsewhere Doctor Strange is thrust into the Orb of Agamotto and into the realm where he encounters Agamotto himself. (Although he is not yet explicitly named but it's pretty clear who this giant caterpillar is meant to be.)

There's a growth in the cosmic elements and a willingness to both define and shake up the universe, seen most obviously in the encounter with the personification of Death. Here the entity is presented as male though the female presentation would subsequently come to be the norm. Death and Eternity are now set out as the two fundamental forces in the universe, marking the very brief start to attempts to rationalise the many different seemingly all powerful cosmic entities who have shown up in Marvel comics over the years. Such is the boldness on the cosmic scale that the end of issue #12 sees the Earth itself destroyed by Mordo's madness. And it isn't an illusion or reversed but instead the planet is recreated by Eternity, with accelerated evolution to restore it to the exact moment. However Doctor Strange has to live with the knowledge of what happened, that everyone around him is a duplicate whilst he is the sole survivor of the original planet.

It's surprising just how close to modern religion this run gets. There's explicit acknowledgement of God and where He sits in the cosmic hierarchy with Eternity clearly below him. Later Doctor Strange battles a being who is presented explicitly as Satan. Although he acknowledges other names such as "Lucifer", "Mephistopheles", "Beelzebub" and "Old Nick", there is nothing here to suggest that he is in fact one of the many demons. Truly the Devil is the most inconsistently portrayed character in the Marvel universe.

One of the recurring themes sees Doctor Strange thrust into a variety of worlds in which he encounters aspects of himself and/or his life. One of the most memorable comes in a realm populated by duplicates of Stephen though the ruler is masked. And it seems Steve Englehart's hostility to Richard Nixon continued unabated even a year after the resignation because the ruler is hiding behind a Richard Nixon mask.

This mixture of the fantastic and the personal works well with some good development of Clea. She and Stephen demonstrate a mixture of uncertainty and disagreement over exactly what their relationship is, though given the age of these issues it's surprising that they're all but actually showing us the couple sleeping together. (For that matter the flashback depicting the one night stand between Clea's parents, Orini and Umar, is also quite close to explicit.) The two aren't always on the same wavelength about when they are being master and disciple and when they are a couple, leading to some unfortunate moments. Clea's insecurities are played on by a number of beings, and ultimately she is subjected to a spell by Xander that leaves her amnesiac and angry, attacking even Doctor Strange. Although the spell is short-lived and Clea soon returns to Stephen's side, it's clear by the end of the volume that there are still issues to resolve.

The United States's bicentennial is marked with an aborted saga called "the Occult History of America" in which Doctor Strange and Clea travel through the nation's history to investigate Sir Francis Bacon's New Atlantis. In the course of the journey they encounter Stygyro, who is presented as the perfect contrast to Strange, being a long-lived and powerful sorcerer from a previous era, travelling across the ages and even seducing Clea whilst in the form of Benjamin Franklin. Unfortunately both the saga and Stygyro fall victim to changing writers, with the Occult History hurriedly abandoned whilst Stygyro later turns up as one of the Creators. The Creators are the main focus of the rear of the volume as they and their agent Xander work to undermine Doctor Strange, even manipulating him into decisions that remove the Sorcerer Supreme title from him. They are a group of sorcerers working with the In-Betweener to reform the universe through the odd method of swapping places with the stars and remoulding the now human stars in their own image. At one stage the Earth has become a place occupied by anthropomorphic animals, including the boar Doctor Stranger Yet who provides for an interesting confrontation between the two counterparts. The epic climaxes in a showdown with the In-Betweener at the Wheel of Change.

The annual serves as a side-step from this storyline as Doctor Strange hunts for Clea but gets dragged into a power struggle in the realm known as Phaseworld, where the Empress Lectra battles both her sister Phaydra and the angel Tempus. However the revelation of Lectra's lies and illusions in luring Stephen ultimately result in the destruction of the whole realm and all who live within it. It's a curious little tale but ultimately it doesn't amount to much and it's easy to see why it would later be rewritten as the 1990s one-shot Doctor Strange: What is it that Disturbs You Stephen?

The crossover with Tomb of Dracula may be significant in the long run for the first interaction between the two lead characters but here it feels like a step out of the comfort zone and into a crossover for the sake of a crossover. It doesn't add much to either series and feels like it was done just to boost sales on the weaker selling title, though I'm not sure which one that was.

This run shows a few deadline problems that led to reprints; oddly both of the original stories are included in full here. In issue #3 Doctor Strange is on a journey through the Orb of Agamotto to confront Death and remembers the events of how he first met Clea and Dormammu. Here there's a brief framing sequence to tie things together, with the final page combining both modern and classic material so it would have been hard to present just the frame as sometimes happens when the Essentials come to a reprint issue. Still it's a surprise and delight to see a Ditko-Lee story again even if the contrast between the original artwork and the-then modern style is all too clear. Issue #21 sees a reprint of "The Coming of... Dr. Strange" from issue #169 of the previous series. It's odd that it's included here as the story is presented straight up as a reprint without any effort to incorporate it into the ongoing narrative. Due to a reduced page count a bit of the story has had to be trimmed and, using volume 2 side by side with volume 3, it's possible to compare the two to see what has been change. Most of the loss is in individual pages but occasionally two pages have been cut up to produce one condensed version. As the most substantial version of Doctor Strange's origin to date it's easy to see why it was chosen but it's harder to understand why it was included in this reprint volume unless someone in production failed to spot it was a reprint until it was too late.

Another issue that feels like a deadline problem is #29 which carries a team-up with Nighthawk as they battle Death-Stalker, the old foe of Daredevil. The whole thing feels odd and a little out of place in the run despite being by the regular creative team. Either this was an attempt by a newish writer to go in a different direction from before or else it was prepared as an emergency standby that could fill-in a gap in either this series or the Defenders. Either way it's a rather unsatisfactory ending to it all.

Overall this volume is solid but not always the strongest. The first two thirds show a good attempt to combine the traditional Doctor Strange mythology with some new elements and new takes on the existing ones, and it broadly works to make the series interesting. However there's still some repetition of themes and it continues in the last third of the volume which shows all the signs of multiple writers struggling with the situation they have inherited, with some going in a clearly different direction from what was previously planned, and the result is an unsatisfactory mess. Doctor Strange is a tricky series to get right so it's a pity when such periods don't last for longer.

Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 2

Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 2 collects issues #26-49 plus Giant-Size Dracula #2-5 (a renaming & refocusing of Giant-Size Chillers hence no #1) and Doctor Strange #14. The regular issues are all written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Gene Colan. The Giant-Sizes are written by Chris Claremont then David Anthony Kraft and drawn by Don Heck then Nestor Redondo. The Doctor Strange issue is written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Gene Colan. Bonus material includes an extra page produced for the reprint of issue #45, and Dracula's picture from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.

The original release of this volume was surprisingly fast, coming less than six months after volume 1. Was it a fast attempt to ride the Buffy wave, albeit after that series had ended? Or was there some now-forgotten major vampire movie in 2004 that Marvel were trying to feed off the interest? Or were the rights limited forcing a speedy release programme before they lapsed? Or was it just down to someone in the Marvel office with a sense of humour noting both the series's British ancestry and Michael Howard's leadership of the Conservative Party? (Now there's a reference that will leave my international readers scratching their heads.)

Whatever the reason this volume is a letdown after the promise of the first. Gene Colan's art remains great but the general direction of the series is rather meandering, with several plotlines taking an eternity to resolve. The Giant-Size issues are standalone and two of them are even set in the past rather than the present. Whilst it leaves Dracula in the present under the control of a single creative team, their placement here just add to the mess by intruding upon the flow. There's a small amount of crossover with the monthly series with Inspector Chelm of Scotland Yard popping up in both and later supplying the regular vampire hunters with information. Other than this and a brief use of Quincy Harker the characters and situations are all original, with Dracula encountering some especially scary examples of the occult such as the Devil's Heart, a giant disembodied organ that is possessing a small town in the American mid West. Other tales are more downbeat such as Dracula's pursuit of a French government agent across Europe or the vampire's own pursuit by Elainne, the daughter of one of his medieval victims who has gained immortality and assembled a militia to gain revenge. The one character of seeming long term significance introduced here is Inspector Katherine Fraser, a Scotland Yard detective with psychic powers, but she doesn't make the leap over to the monthly. All in all the Giant-Size series is a disappointment and shows that it takes more than the character's name to make a good spin-off series.

Over in the main series things are really dragged out by a long running plot involving Dracula's powers steadily weakening, which ultimately turns out to be the manipulations of Doctor Sun. A disembodied brain may not seem the obvious rival to a vampire, although the name is fitting, but Sun's technology and cunning offers a good counterpoint to a primeval creature, upping the tension. Adding to the counterpoints is Sun's henchman Juno, who has a silver lance in place of a hand. The hunt eventually brings Dracula to the United States via an experimental spy plane and into a protracted showdown in which Quincy Harker and his vampire hunters find they need Dracula more than they realise, forcing them to take some drastic steps.

In the meantime, the vampire hunters are scattered across the globe. Taj has returned to India where his son has become a vampire, forcing Taj and his estranged wife to face the horror of having to kill their child before the local mobs do. Eventually he realises he can't but can only look on in horror as the mobs surge past him and perform the task. After this Taj drops out of the series as he opts to stay in India and rebuild his life with his wife. Perhaps somebody also realised how much of a stereotype a strong, silent Indian manservant is. Frank Drake is lured to South America by a friend who turns out to be working for Dracula who wants his descendent out of the way. This leads to encounters with zombies who are about to kill him when he is saved by a gratuitous guest appearance by Brother Voodoo. The crossing of genres just doesn't work and leaves the characters' presence all too exposed as a promotional puff piece, more so than the average guest appearance. Elsewhere Rachel van Helsing is reassessing her relationship with Drake whilst Quincy Harker is looking back on his long years of fighting the vampire and the huge cost to him both financially and personally. He remains ever resourceful, with his home containing no end of booby traps against Dracula, exploiting crosses, garlic, stakes and more, even right down to the crosses on the collar of his dog, appropriately named Saint. Quincy proves highly resourceful in luring the vampire to his lair and almost slays him but is forced to back down and save his foe when the nearly dead Dracula reveals he has had two other vampires take Rachel hostage.

Elsewhere Blade is used sparingly throughout much of the volume as he continues his own quest to track down and destroy Deacon Frost, the vampire that killed his mother, but this does eventually lead to his crossing paths with Dracula once more, actually allying against Doctor Sun. He then joins with Hannibal King, a detective vampire who refuses to feed on humans, to track down Frost, with the situation complicated by Frost's ability to create duplicates of those he bites, with Blade's duplicate actually absorbing him.

Arriving in Boston Dracula soon meets two more recurring cast members. Harold H. Harold is a hack writer suffering long term from Writer's Block when the appearance of a true-life vampire offers the prospect of an interview. He is also trying, with limited success, to date Aurora Rabinowitz, his editor's secretary. Both characters are played somewhat for laughs but Aurora defies expectations when she shows her resourcefulness when the pair raid the Harvard hospital blood bank to obtain supplies for a weakened Dracula. Harold nearly does get his interview from an amused and grateful Dracula, but the attempt is interrupted by Juno. However when it is all over Harold is able to overcome his Writer's Block and publish "True Vampire Stories" based on his adventure. But Aurora also produces a book called "I Loved a Vampire" and still takes a long time to see yes when Harold repeatedly asks her out on a date.

In the showdown with Doctor Sun, Dracula is actually killed by Juno's lance and then the corpse incinerated. For a few issues it seems as though the vampire is truly gone and all that remains is his legacy, with the vampire hunters left to stop Sun's plans to take over the world. But it soon becomes clear that only Dracula has the power to stop Sun, leading to debate about whether they should resurrect him or not. Soon Aurora's tears prove to be the ingredient they need and Dracula returns to the fight, allying with Blade and seemingly destroying Doctor Sun for good.

There's a continuation of the rewriting of Dracula's history since the events described in the Bram Stoker novel, with the establishment of a greater history of encounters with Blade, backdating them to the 1960s. Although the retcons may allow for a greater cast interaction with Dracula, it gets ever more confusing to try to understand just how long he has been out of operation and just what the consequences are of his actions. It might have been better to follow the lead of the Monster of Frankenstein title and start the series at some point in the past after the famous novel, then slowly bring the lead character to the present day with the back story more clearly set out.

Dracula is also forced to face up to the consequences of his actions when he meets Shiela Whittier, the owner of a castle he settles in during the day. Initially he hopes to use his host as a hypnotised slave to perform actions whilst the sun is up, but after banishing the ghost of her uncle (secretly actually her father) from the castle the two find themselves drawn together. However she subsequently discovers his true nature and turns instead to David Eshcol, a practising Jew and son of the owner of a pawnshop that contains an important magical artefact. David and Shiela fall for each other and flee Dracula after a defeat of Doctor Sun, but David is scared of reprisals and sets out to kill the lord of vampires, only to himself die in the process. Shiela then chooses suicide over servitude, leaving Dracula with two corpses and facing the very dark impact of his nature and actions. Later Dracula finds the pointlessness of revenge as he battles the Faceless Man, the reanimated corpse of a murder victim seeking his killers. Dracula gets caught up in the murders but the Faceless Man disintegrates before either his mission is complete or Dracula can gain his own revenge.

There are some nods to wider trends in society, most notably the encounter with Daphne von Wilkinson, a fashion designer and arch feminist who despises all men, especially her business rivals. She cuts a deal with Dracula to provide information on the location of Doctor Sun in exchange for the elimination of her main rivals. Dracula complies though starts to wonder if he's wasting his time, but both parties deliver their side of the deal. Only there's a twist as all the victims are now vampires who come to feed on von Wilkinson. Later on the 1970s growth in Satanism is reflected when Dracula takes over a cult and marries Domini, one of the followers, planning to create a child to be born on December 25th. Meanwhile the previous cult leader, Anton Lupeski, is secretly plotting to destroy Dracula.

The crossover with Doctor Strange is not especially memorable, being motivated by Dracula's attack on Strange's servant Wong. This leads to a battle as the magician tries to force the vampire to help resurrect the servant, in which Strange's body is transformed into a vampire though his astral self remains free. Eventually he seemingly destroys Dracula and cures both himself and Wong of the vampire curse, making in total for a rather slight crossover that doesn't really add anything to this volume.

The volume ends at a point when many of the story threads are still ongoing, with both Blade and King's battle against Frost's duplicates and Rachel, Frank and Harold's battle against the cultists in mid action. Dracula's plans are ongoing as well. Whilst there are often times when there's no simple clean point to bite off a chunk of a series for a collected edition, this one feels more ragged than most. When combined with the sheer tediousness of the Doctor Sun storyline that takes seemingly forever to resolve, the result is a rather disappointing volume that tries to do things with its main characters but doesn't really feel suitably spectacular. The series has a reputation as a great epic but a lot of epics have turgid middle sections and this is clearly one of them.

Essential Werewolf by Night volume 1

Essential Werewolf by Night volume 1 contains Marvel Spotlight #2-4, Werewolf by Night #1-21, Marvel Team-Up #12, Giant-Size Creatures #1 and Tomb of Dracula #18. Bonus material includes the Werewolf's entry from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and an alternate cover to Marvel Spotlight #4. The character's debut is plotted by Roy and Jeanie Thomas and scripted by Gerry Conway. Conway writes the rest of the Marvel Spotlight issues and some of the Werewolf by Night issues; others are written by Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Mike Friedrich and Doug Moench. Conway plots and Wein scripts the Marvel Team-Up whilst Wolfman writes the Tomb of Dracula issue and Tony Isabella the Giant-Size Creatures. The art on Marvel Spotlight and Werewolf by Night is mainly by Mike Ploog with Don Perlin taking over at the end of the run; other issues are drawn by Werner Roth, Tom Sutton and Gil Kane. Perlin also draws the Giant-Size Creatures story, whilst the Tomb of Dracula issue is by Gene Colan and the Marvel Team-Up by Ross Andru. Yet again this results in a lot of labels, so some have been placed in a separate post.

The Werewolf is often bracketed together with Dracula and the Monster of Frankenstein to form a trinity of Gothic era monsters, and some of these traditional links are respected within these pages, most obviously the crossover with Tomb of Dracula. But whereas both the Frankenstein Monster and Dracula are drawn primarily from famous novels, the Werewolf lacks a direct literary base and is instead drawn from legends that go back to at least the Middle Ages. Literature and film may have added elements to the mythology, but there's no single story to follow and no single werewolf who strides through popular culture with a distinct character. As a result creators have much greater scope here than with the other horror imports.

Here we get the story of Jack Russell, a young American man who upon turning eighteen discovers he has inherited the curse of transforming into a werewolf every night during a full moon. Although he usually retains sentience about what his wolf form gets up to, there is no control and he can only be a passive narrator to the actions of the animal man. Towards the end of the volume he does gain some temporary control, whether through the magical intervention of Topaz or thanks to a ring that transforms him at any time and leaves Jack in control, but neither method lasts very long. Jack comes with a well developed background with his father having been an eastern European noble who also succumbed to the curse and was killed in wolf form. Jack's mother has remarried and she gets killed in the first issue. Jack suspects his step-father, Philip Russell, of being responsible and in addition tensions about inheritances from both his natural parents create a wedge between the two but due to a promise he made to his mother on her deathbed, Jack is unable to take action against Philip and even his werewolf form feels restrained. Jack's closest friend is his younger sister Lissa, who has not yet reached eighteen by the end of the volume, and there's a long running question about whether she too will succumb to the curse. With some additional good supporting cast members the result is a strong set-up as Jack struggles to control his lycanthropic side and fend off a succession of interventions by those after one part of his magical legacy or another.

"Jack Russell" is one of those names that makes for a good pun but doesn't withstand close scrutiny when one realises that "Russell" is his stepfather's name yet his lycanthropic heritage comes from his natural father. Nor for that matter does it describe the breed of dog that Jack turns into. A later writer establishes that the step-father is the natural father's brother, as part of a general wrap-up of the issues within the Russell family, but, as is often the case with such revelations under later writers (and this comes under the third regular writer), it just doesn't feel like this was part of the original plan. I'm not too certain if "Russell" really is an Anglicisation if "Russoff" though as there's never been a regulator of converting names it's easy to see how some immigration official could produce that one. The other inevitable bad pun comes straightaway on the credits of issue #11 as they announce the arrival of writer Marv Wolfman.

This is another series that largely keeps to itself, with the encounters with other Marvel characters restricted to a single crossovers, one Giant-Size issue and a solitary Marvel Team-Up. Such restraint is quite remarkable given that the character is based Los Angeles at a time when so too were the Black Widow and Daredevil, whilst the Ghost Rider was also roaming the west. But instead of some of these obvious meetings we just get three guest appearances, one from Marvel's biggest horror character, one by Marvel's biggest superhero overall and one by an obscure hero being reinvented as a kind of were-woman who offers a contrast with Jack's situation plus conflict with the established terrorist group Hydra. Since the Marvel Team-Up issue is the very last one to appear in this volume I can't tell if it's a vital set-up for storylines to come in volume 2 or has just been included either to fill up pages or perhaps to get Spider-Man completists to buy it. But it does feel highly inconsequential as Jack and Spider-Man clash with a magician working undercover on the stage. The Giant-Size Creatures issue feels rather more justified, with the Werewolf taking the cover billing and the encounter being referenced in the regular series, even though it's not entirely clear just where in the tight ongoing continuity Jack found time for a holiday in Mexico. Still it allows for a team-up with Tigra, the new form of the hero previously known as the Cat but who is transformed here. However Jack's presence in the issue is a reminder of just how popular he was at the time - before Marvel rolled out a wide range of Giant-Size versions of many of their titles, they first released just a few with more generic overall titles to test the format. It's amazing to find that the Werewolf headed one of the last of these tests, putting him on an equal footing with the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Dracula. Not bad for such a new character with no individual roots in either literature or film.

The crossover with Tomb of Dracula may be trying to strengthen the connection between the two monsters, but it just feels awkward and forced. Members of both titles' supporting casts appear but with the exception of Frank Drake from Tomb of Dracula, neither set is properly introduced for the other book's readers. The crossover fleshes out the origin of the Russoff/Russell family curse and appropriately it is dated to the Gothic era of the late eighteenth century. Unfortunately it's also tied to the history of Dracula for no particular reason. Maybe the intention was to show a long history of the Russoffs/Russells fighting against Dracula but there's no such revelation here. Instead we just learn how Jack's ancestor had killed Dracula and freed a young girl prisoner, only to discover she was a werewolf who promptly bit and infected him. Nothing in this part of the origin necessitates either the presence of Dracula or a second ancestral home to go alongside the already established Baltic castle (which is relocated brick by brick to the United States). There's also evidence of a terrible grasp of geography as Transylvania gets presented as a single village deep in the interior of Romania yet it also has a sailor with his boat moored locally. It seems the village is located on the Danube, with Castle Dracula located on the very bank of the river, again something that would not get good marks in a geography exam. All in all the crossover just feels like a rush job to capitalise on both titles' popularity and shared writer.

By contrast the bulk of the regular series generally feels as though it has been carefully constructed. All the standard werewolf traditions are in place, whether the full moon or the aversion to silver. I'm not so familiar with details such as the curse being passed by a bite or by inheritance, or whether the curse can be broken if the werewolf finds and kills another of its kind, but both aspects feel entirely in place with the rest of this neo-Gothic series. Early on the threats are predominantly one-offs, primarily pursuing the Werewolf for one mystical purpose or another, but later on there are some more recurring foes established, most notably the mysterious and, at this stage, unseen organisation known only as "the Committee" who turn out to have been behind the death of Jack's mother and the blackmail of his step-father. Another recurring foe is the sorcerer Taboo. Elsewhere, following up on a Marvel tradition, there's a villainous circus but for once it's a different outfit from the Ringmaster's lot. Then there's a latter-day hunchback who inhabits Notre Dame. Many other one-off foes fit into various archetypes of sorcerers, non-magical criminals, or even big game hunters. A few foes are introduced who would go on to memorable appearances in other Marvel series including Tatterdemalion the vengeful derelict, or the self-appointed executing vigilante the Hangman, whose name seems a bit of a misnomer as he appears to do most of his killing with a scythe. There are also a couple of vampires imported from the pages of Dracula Lives, but that and the appearances of Dracula and Hydra already mentioned are it for foes from elsewhere.

But Jack's real foe is his own altered self. Wisely he's not written as the Hulk with fur, although there are a few similarities such as the endless torn trousers and the brief attempt to get his monstrous side confined for the night under the guard of his closest male friend. Instead the Werewolf is presented as an actual animal albeit in anthropomorphic form and this makes for a total sense of helplessness as neither Jack can control it nor can anyone else reason with it. Every month he transforms without fail and the series does its best to note which particular day in the cycle it is - with the Marvel Team-Up issue managing to work in an out of cycle transformation so as to not disturb this pattern.

Jack's main supporting cast are initially his loyal sister Lissa, who is herself targeted at times by those seeking the mystical powers of the werewolf curse, and writer Buck Cowan who befriends Jack and often serves to protect him when the curse takes hold. When Jack takes up a room in a singles' building he soon befriends some of the other residents, including the actress Clary Winter who is not the only woman in the building to make moves on him. His immediate neighbour is the mysterious Raymond Coker, who turns out to also be a werewolf and desperately using whatever magic he can to keep his lycanthropic side under control. Another who turns werewolf is Lou Hackett, a police lieutenant who investigates the sightings but subsequently receives one of the werewolf rings and is himself transformed. Then there's the young witch Topaz who forms a bond with Jack and for a time is able to give him control of his wolf form but over time her powers drain and she is forced to go away and seek to revitalise them.

Overall this series is quite a surprise. Right from the outset it manages to blend elements from traditional legends with common themes developed by the superhero comics to produce a series with a strong sympathetic lead character caught in a troublesome situation and supported by a good wider cast of characters. This is not a tale of superheroics and so there's little need to establish a recurring set of foes. Instead this is a tale of one man struggling with a curse and with the trouble it brings with it. The result is a good solid read.

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.