For Occasions when your tired of your usual Mumbo-Jumbo In truth, the Marvel company is probably one of the most well known and most famous comic book companies there are. When one thinks of Marvel, they usually might think of a lot of famous ditzy super-hero characters living these ice cream type lives where their biggest problem tends to usually be deciding between Lisa, Mary, or Sandra. In actuality these characters, whom we all know, the Human Torch, Mr Fantastic, Spider-Man, and Thor to name a few, truly have no lives at all! Their only lives tend to really lie in the need to jump at the first sign of trouble the way a fish will jump for bait. These characters are almost invulnerable and usually have writers thinking of lame ways to bail them out of situations that get too big for them. Suddenly! a button might appear that they can push, or... like... out of nowhere--KAZA!-- they can hold their breath longer than the bad guy! (How Convenient.) Some heroes, like Dr Strange, need only make a few silly chants... and... Presto! his troubles are solved.
Often times these heroes also tend to be involved in some korny romance that never in actuality goes anyplace. Not so in Dracula!
Now while reading stories like these is a load of fun, there are moments when we need other things also. Dracula is perfect for that. Though it may be difficult for some to believe that Marvel could actually pull of a Horror title. It was for me. When we think of Marvel, we usually DO think of those above-mentioned happy-go-lucky characters whose lives are cake. Dracula is for those who crave the opposite! A super powered character that actually has problems and faces real challenges. Something Stan Lee alone could never concieve of.
But yes, what we have here is horror at its finest. A perfect continuation from where Bram Stoker left off. It's told so well too. Dracula's descendant Frank Drake stumbles upon his tomb. His spiteful friend pulls the stake out of Dracula and he wakes up to unleash his fury on the modern world! Not only that, but he is also much more clever than he was in the original novel. Eventually, Rachel Van Helsing, descendant of DR Van Helsing who originally plunged the stake into Dracula, joins Frank Drake (Drakula, get it?), in order to help him put Dracula back in the Tomb. What's even better here than was in the novel is that Dracula is a HECK of a lot smarter here. In the novel, he just played right into the hands of the good guys. Here, Dracula actually has to think his way out of things, even if it means holding another vampire in front of him. Like when Rachel, Frank, and their assistant Taj corner Dracula in some mansion using the assistance of police aircraft. Dracula has nowhere to escape. What does he do? You won't get it here!
So far, I am not dissapointed with this series. It's just what I needed. It has some well told stories and makes use of great dialogue. It even features a nice education on religious mythos and parts of London. If you get into it enough, you'll actually feel like you're there. It's even got stories of time travel, dimensional travel, heaven, hell and all things betwixt. Even cooler, Dracula gets a human partner to help him in the form of Clifton Graves, the man who pulled the stake out of him and re-awoke him!--and he was the best friend of Frank Drake, who is pursuing him, which makes for a good plot twist. This is awesomeness at its finest! I didn't think Marvel could pull it off, but they did. The best part though... it can be read in and of itself. In other words it can exist seperately from the Marvel Universe. It can be like Ann Rice, who we sometimes like to think of the vampires in HER books being in our own world. The same holds true here--we can take it as being a part of the Marvel Universe or in a reality in and of itself.
But beware, it gets brutal sometimes, so it's certainly not for the too sqeemish. In essence, this series is good for those of us who are tired of those usual routine comic book characters who spend their time kissing the behinds of various females in distress. Dracula, rather than kiss them, feeds them to the rats! And the artwork is awesome even without the color. How can you go wrong?
Classic Marvel wasn't just about superheroes Back during my "Marvel maniac" days in high school and college, I was more of a devotee of the company's costumed heroes, so I didn't particularly follow titles like "Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu", "Tomb of Dracula", or other non-superhero titles that took place on the fringes of the Marvel Universe.
I'm now enjoying Marvel's inexpensive "Essentials" volumes to catch up on a lot of those previously unread titles, during those occasional times when I still get into a comics-reading mood despite my now being a boring adult. And I'm certainly glad that I recently took a few weeks to read "Essential Tomb of Dracula, Volume One".
On the one hand, after being exposed to the complex, often sympathetic vampires of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Dark Shadows", and various Anne Rice novels, the purely evil for evil's sake Dracula of "Tomb of Dracula" initially seemed a little regressive and simplistic. But on the other hand, such a character- as the star of an ongoing series, no less- was certainly bracing and in-your-face. And that latter feeling ultimately took over and I started really enjoying this moody yet energetic series as I moved through the 27 or so issues reproduced here.
As another Amazon reviewer excellently put it, this is a series about hunters and the hunted, with Dracula and the title's supporting cast of vampire hunters taking turns fulfilling those roles (the vampire hunters chase Dracula in one issue, Dracula attacks them in the next, and so on). These stories are broken up occasionally by a stand-alone horror mystery where Dracula takes on some other supernatural threat like a haunting or some other strangeness that threatens some issue that Dracula cares about. There's even a science-fiction style threat to Dracula in the form of the mysterious Dr. Sun, whose origin and appearance is like something right out of an "Avengers" or "Fantastic Four" story.
Common wisdom is that "Tomb of Dracula" got better as it went along over the years, so it's good to know that these perfectly entertaining tales will likely be followed by even better ones in subsequent volumes. But for now, these initial stories, virtually all written by the reliable Marv Wolfman, are hardly an ordeal to get through, and Gene Colon's shadowy, moody artwork- dreamlike yet very detailed- is a joy to behold in black and white. By the way, that's another reason to employ these inexpensive "Essentials" volumes to catch up on or revisit "Tomb of Dracula": Mr. Colon's artwork arguably looks even better in black and white than it did in the color comics in which it originally appeared.
Good stories, great artwork, lots and lots of pages of entertainment, and all at a cheap price- what's not to like?
Graphic SF Reader In the beginning, this series was just finding its feet. When the editors hit on the combination of Wolfman and Colan to take over, it started producing gold.
A team of vampire hunters come together with a descendant of Dracula to pursue and frustrate the Lord of Vampires all around the world.
Dracula, Marvel-style Though it's a little more common nowadays, comic books that starred villains instead of heroes have always been something of a rarity. In the 1970s, Marvel gave it a shot with such books as Werewolf by Night and Supervillain Team Up, but the former wasn't so much a villain as a good-guy-turned-beast (not unlike the Hulk), and the latter - with a rather brief run - actually co-featured the Sub-Mariner, who is much more an antihero than a villain. No, the best Marvel villain book - both in terms of length-of-run and quality - was The Tomb of Dracula.
Volume One of the Essential Tomb of Dracula contains the first 25 issues of the title along with a couple associated issues of Werewolf By Night and Giant-Size Chillers. The star of the book is, of course, Dracula, a vampire with a monstrous ego and the powers to back it up. He is not merely misunderstood (like the Frankenstein Monster) or unable to control his powers (like the Werewolf). He is out-and-out evil, relishing the violent death he dispenses. In Issue #1, he is safely staked, but that is soon rectified when his descendent Frank Drake comes to claim Castle Dracula. Drake's duplicitous friend pulls out the stake and is rewarded by being enslaved by the Count. After Drake is forced to kill his newly vampiric girlfriend, he is quite despondent until he is brought into the fold of Dracula's hunters.
These hunters include Rachel van Helsing and Quincy Harker, both descendants of characters from Bram Stoker's novel. They are assisted by the mute Indian Taj and later by Blade the Vampire Killer. The stories deal primarily with the hunter-and-prey relationship between this group and Dracula, with both groups serving in both roles. Soon another villain will come into the mix, the mysterious Dr. Sun, whose own schemes seek to eliminate both sides. Dr. Sun's first story arc is in this volume, with a more significant arc in Volume 2 (which I had actually read first).
With writer Marv Wolfman and artist Gene Colan responsible for most of the issues in Tomb Dracula's run, there is a pleasant consistency in quality that often evades other works. This is a story with little in the way of superheroics (Blade is around as close as it gets, and even he is strictly human); instead, this is a chronicle of supernatural horror. If this is a genre you enjoy, Tomb of Dracula is the best in the comics field.
The best Marvel horror title ever crafted Before Werewolf by Night, or Ghost Rider, or even Monster of Frankenstein, there was the Tomb of Dracula. Debuting in the 70's and the beginning of Marvel's foray into horror comics; Tomb of Dracula began with longtime Spider-Man scribe Gerry Conway at the helm with the legendary Gene Colan providing the pencils. The series begins with Frank Drake, a living descendant of Count Dracula, inheriting Castle Dracula, and unwittingly awakening the vampire lord. Eventually, Drake has to make a big sacrifice, and the writing reins are soon taken over by Archie Goodwin, and later by Gardner Fox. It wasn't until Marv Wolfman took over the series that Tomb of Dracula really took off, as new characters like Rachel Van Helsing and later Hannibal King (in the last issue of this Essential title) are introduced that would have a huge impact on the series until it's end. What Wolfman is the most credited for with Tomb of Dracula, is the creation of the mysterious vampire hunter Blade, who makes his debut in the tenth issue of the series. Later on, there is a cross over with Werewolf by Night, and the first appearance of Dracula's daughter Lilith. Gene Colan's pencils are simply gorgeous, and when he's teamed with inker Tom Palmer, it's really something to behold, even in black and white. All in all, like many of Marvel's other Essential titles, Essential Tomb of Dracula is a deal for the price if you don't mind the brittle black and white pages, and it's the beginning of the best Marvel horror title you'll ever read.
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