:: UGO Community
Related Links
COMIC INFORMATION
Marvel's wonderful Essential Books collect chronological runs of hard to find comics in massive phone book sized volumes, in black and white to keep the price down (hey, DC! Are you paying attention?). Although initially used for the obvious -- Spider-Man, Fantastic Four -- and mainly from the 1960s, they've branched out into more modern eras and increasingly atypical properties. Tomb of Dracula was one of the most successful non-anthology horror comics of the 1970s (lasting longer than Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, and others). And with the recent success of the Blade movies -- a character introduced in Tomb of Dracula -- clearly Marvel felt the time was ripe for a resurrection. A run of issues was reprinted, along with the comic book adaptation of the movie, Blade 2, in a color TPB, and then Marvel released its first Essential Tomb of Dracula. One assumes it must have done well enough to warrant this second volume.  And if you want to start somewhere, volume two is probably the place. Not that volume one wasn't good, but there's a feeling writer Marv Wolfman really started to hit his stride with these issues. The premise is simple -- Dracula is alive and well and wreaking mayhem in the 1970s and a band of vampire hunters are allied against him. Bram Stoker's novel has inspired countless pastiches, but Tomb of Dracula created its own mythos and history in a way that no movie has ever been able to do. In some Dracula fan circles, apparently, the comic is considered almost canonical, second only to Stoker's novel. And despite the character's use -- even over use -- in other mediums, the comic created a surprisingly unique interpretation. While maintaining aspects of the traditional, aristocratic take, this Dracula is more primal, smashing through doors, leaping upon his victims, and is described in grandiose terms -- Prince of Evil, Lord of the Undead, a Creature Born of Hell; this Dracula is almost Satan incarnate. He is bombastic and arrogant, given to ranting and raging, even as he slips into melancholic self- pity. Wolfman cleverly excuses the character's volatility when a psychiatrist concludes Dracula is a manic depressive, and that his actions aren't always rational. How many other versions of the character have tried to articulate such a vision?  What they've done is marry the character with standard comic book villains like Dr. Doom or Magneto, creating a memorable hybrid. Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee seem rather tepid by comparison. Gene Colan's character design is unique, with his mustache and thick-boned features and cadaverous, taloned fingers, decked out in a black cloak that swathes the character in a defining omnipresent shadow that only Colan can pull off. When other artists, like Don Heck, employ the same costume design, the cloak becomes a cape and looks silly, like a guy who's just stepped out of a costume party. Wolfman seems to be hitting his stride with this second collection, and the series benefits from the now almost lost art of treating comics, not as simply a movie in print, but as a hybrid of novels and film, where florid, mood setting captions add nuance to the visuals.
 An early story arc is reflective of the ambition that was fuelling the hot young turks at Marvel in the early 1970s, rife with ruminations on love, morality and God, as Dracula quests after a mystical artifact, involving him with a troubled woman and a rabbinical student. It's ironic that those two characters are more interesting than the series' regular heroes because, in the next issue, Wolfman summarily writes them out. One can't be sure if Wolfman just got bored with them, or whether that was his intention, to create a title where heroes could come and go, and even die (if so, it anticipated the direction of Wolfman and Colan's later DC series, Night Force, in which the stated point was to vary the heroes). A recurring villain in some of these issues, introduced in the first Essential volume, is Dr. Sun, a disembodied brain. An epic struggle between them serves as this collection's longest story arc...and one of Wolfman's better sustained, long form efforts, with some effective twists and turns and shifting allegiances.  Wolfman's use of his regular cast of Rachel Van Helsing, avuncular, wheelchair-bound Quincy Harker (both descended from characters in Stoker's seminal novel), Frank Drake, Taj Nital and, of course, Blade, is also stronger, sending them off on separate sub-plots threaded through a few issues, creating a sense of a complex tapestry. However, Wolfman's familiar tendency to seem as though he's going somewhere, and then lose his thread, is evident here. Taj is summoned to India, and Frank is lured with a job offer in South America, but both suffer from reiterating the same scenes again and again. The obscure Marvel character, Brother Voodoo, joins the action for a few issues...but his involvement is never explained satisfactorily, nor even who he is for those unfamiliar with him. And a sub-plot, involving Dracula exerting influence over members of the British government, never really builds to anything. However, the story with Taj boasts a powerful emotional complexity. Ironically, after finally adding depth to this previously ill-defined character, Wolfman then writes him out!  Mid-series, Wolfman relocates the series from England to America, effectively eliminating a few supporting characters, and adding new ones, notably Harold P. Harold, a hack writer and comic relief who dominates the stage for a few issues, with problematic results. Adding a comical touch to the series might have seemed a good counterpoint to the grim horror, but Harold and the flaky Aurora just aren't that funny. At the same time, it's an admirable illustration of the scope and variety Wolfman is attempting, as the series veers from human drama, to action, from horror to comedy. In this collection, Wolfman takes mainstay Frank Drake and drastically alters him from a troubled everyman, into a two-fisted, take no guff, comic book hero archetype. It robs the series of some of its tone, of vaguely believable people battling Dracula. When Frank starts tackling machine gun wielding thugs with his bare hands, plausibility is out the window. Of course, there may have been a baser, more parochial motive for the change, as it seemed to make Frank -- the sole American in the original cast -- more of a driving force in the story, just as Dracula relocates to America, and more American characters (like Harold) are added.  Also included in this volume are four issues of Giant-Size Dracula by different creative teams. The best is #5, by writer David Anthony Kraft (who seemed to be abusing his thesaurus a little) with elegant art by Nestor Redondo. The series' success owes immeasurably to the stunning art by Gene Colan, who drew every issue of the regular series, usually inked quite sympathetically by Tom Palmer. Colan is an artist whose stuff I reasonably liked as a kid. But as I get older, it just leaves me in awe. Colan's rumpled figures mix photorealism at times with an explosive, interpretive style where legs can bend in bowed shapes and arms jab out in a way that invests the scenes with a palpable vibrancy, telling the story through creative (but never distracting or self-indulgent) angles, while swathing things in deep shadows, ideal for a supernatural comic. It's a look which takes to the black and white of these Essential books exceptionally well. Colan often defines his shapes by their shadows, rather than using line work to etch out features. He and Palmer at times create a look you generally only associate with fully painted art. You merely have to contrast it with the more conventional, workmanlike art of Don Heck on a few of the Giant-Size issues to just be stunned by what Colan is doing. He invests mood in Wolfman's scenes, he breathes life into characters that might otherwise just be one-dimensional.  These stories are also a bit of a pop culture time capsule of the 1970s. Blade, the black street fighter, clearly arises from "blaxploitation" heroes, while another issue is a riff on TV's Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Dr. Sun, the Asian villain, might owe a bit to the interest in the martial arts that was fuelling concurrent comics like Iron Fist and Master of Kung Fu. The mixing of the gothic horror of vampires with the almost kitchsy sci-fi of a brain in a jar is perhaps mainly reflective of the "anything goes" mentality that permeates mainstream comics. This run of issues isn't flawless, suffering from repetition, and plot threads and character elements that can fizzle out as often as they catch fire, and towards the end, new sup-plots are introduced that go unresolved (until an Essential ToD 3, I guess). But the sheer volume -- and variety -- of stories allows the strengths to easily overwhelm the weaknesses, making this a moody, off-beat tome of Tomb. | ||||||
