Cover Cavalcade

 

Great use of perspective in this cover from 1975. The artist is Luis Dominguez.

Wild West Lawman vs. Vampire

 

cover art by Earl Norem

Dracula Lives is one of several black-and-white books published by Marvel between 1973 and 1975, under the Marvel Monster Group brand. The 13th issue (July 1975) was the last and included a great story pitting a grizzled veteran lawman from the Old West against Dracula. 

Written by Tony Isabella and drawn by Tony DeZuniga, "Bounty for a Vampire" looks great in black-and-white. It starts off in media res, with the unnamed Marshal walking into Dracula's castle. 

It's actually a nice touch that Marshal is never given a name. Like Hammett's Continental Op, the Marshal is defined by his profession. We learn this in brief flashbacks that are seeded throughout the story. He had been an army scout (which is why he isn't freaked out by vampires--he's seen plenty of Indian magic) and has been a lawman for 20 years. When the town he's watched over fired him because of his age, he took a bounty hunting job.

That this job is tracking the vampires that killed a rich man's son back to Transylvania might be unusual, but it's a job he proves to be good at. Remember that the flashbacks are used to gradually give us his background. The story actually starts with his entry into the castle and proof that he's researched vampires and prepared properly. He guns down a few minor-league bloodsuckers with silver bullets, then beheads them to make sure they stay dead.

Next, he meets a sexy lady vampire, who--like all sexy lady vampires--attempts to, well, vamp him. He responds to her overtures by driving a stack into her heart.

But before he can behead her, Dracula himself shows up. He's been toying with the Marshal, allowing him to take out some minions, but the girl is too valuable to lose on a permanent basis. So he's decided to kill the Marshal personally.

That doesn't prove easy, though. The Marshal is very, very good in a fight. Also, he carries a shotgun loaded with silver buckshot. When it appears he might actually win the fight, Dracula changes tactics, playing on the Marshal's sense of law and order. Does the Marshal have the right to kill Dracula without a trial?

I'm pretty sure the correct answer to that is a resounding YES! But the Marshal seems swayed by the argument. He turns his back to Dracula as he walks back towards the castle entrance.

This is too much of a temptation for Dracula, who attacks again. But the Marshal is quick with the shotgun and he has no problem at all with the concept of self-defense. 

The stories in Dracula Lives weren't necessarily a part of the continuity of Marvel's color Tomb of Dracula book, which allowed them to run stories in which the Lord of the Vampire gets killed. On the other hand, he got killed a number of times in Tomb of Dracula, but was always getting resurrected. (Which includes one memorable occasion when he's brought back by the vampire hunters who had killed him to battle a disembodied brain that was about to conquer the world.) So that he might have gotten killed a few years before the events of the novel Dracula isn't impossible in a Marvel Universe context. Especially since the Marshal, in his eagerness to make a dramatic exit, seems to have forgotten about the necessity of beheading the corpse. Gee whiz.

But I don't mean to make fun of the story. It's well-written, with the use of flashbacks to gradually build up the Marshal's history and character being particularly impressive. And DeZuniga's art is fantastic. He had a flair for bringing stories of the Old West to gritty life, even if a particular Old West story is set in Transylvania and involves vampires.

That's it for now. Next week, we'll see what it's like to raise a baby who has superpowers. 

Spider Man Doesn't Quite Fight Dracula

cover art by John Romita

Some aspects of Giant Size Spider Man #1 (1974) seem hastily or carelessly written, so I wonder if writer Len Wein and artist Ross Andru were told "Spider Man vs. Dracula, guys. Right now!" and given a tight deadline to come up with something.

On the other hand, Andru's art looks typically cool (I always like his work on Spider Man) and the story has its strong points as well.

It actually starts with a weak point, though, as several pages are wasted when Spidey has an inconclusive encounter with a jewel thief who apparently has ice powers. Since he'll soon be borrowing a rocket plane from Johnny Storm, this opening scene exists merely to set up a Human Torch/Iceman team-up in that month's issue of Marvel Team-Up, also written by Wein. I'm a fan of Wein's work, but that's a sneaky little cross-promotion that takes pages away from the story we are supposed to be reading.

The story finally gets started when Peter finds out Aunt May is deathly ill yet again. Only a vaccine being brought over on a cruise ship by a doctor named A.J. Maxfield can save her.  (We'll ignore the fact that vaccines are meant to prevent disease, not cure them. It's a slip that any writer might make.) Maxfield is terrified of flying, which explains the cruise ship travel.

So Peter heads to the Baxter Building to borrow a rocket plane and fetch Maxfield and the vaccine to NYC in time to save May, taking a panel to tell Johnny about the jewel thief before he leaves.

It turns out other people are looking for the good doctor as well. A Maggai crime boss wants to snatch Maxfield and ransom back the vaccine for a pardon for past crimes. He's brought along a small army of thugs disguised as members of the ship's band.

The other person looking for Maxfield is Dracula, Lord of the Vampires. Here we hit another couple of weak spots in the story. Dracula's motivation for killing Maxfield is some vague "That vaccine might interfere with my plans for world conquest" line of reasoning that is spoken and dismissed in one panel. I get the impression that Wein couldn't come up with a truly logical reason to get Dracula on the ship and just tossed in a line of dialogue to get that whole issue out of the way.

Peter resumes his civilian clothes when he gets on the boat. He and Drac then encounter each other for the first and only time in the story. For some reason, Peter's Spidey Sense is on the fritz, as he walks past one of the most dangerous beings in the world without a qualm.

I seem to keep dumping on this story, but--though I do think my criticisms are legitimate--I do enjoy it in the end. Of course, the story upends our expectations by never having Spidey and Dracula directly fight each other. A reader could see this as another weakness. On the other hand, both characters headline their own comics, so a fight between them would have to have been inconclusive. So perhaps the direction in which Wein took the story is the best one.

 Anyway, Dracula soon encounters and easily disposes of some of the Maggai thugs. He also drains a young lady of much of her blood, which causes the captain to summon Maxfield to the ship's clinic to help treat her. A nice twist here is that a man and a woman both arrive, with Peter (and later both Dracula and the Maggai) automatically assuming the man is Maxfield. We don't find out until the last few pages that the good doctor is a lady.

When the Maggai thugs kidnap the wrong guy, Spider Man starts luring them out onto the deck by blocking hatchways with webbing. Thus, they know who is after them and, in a truly funny moment, the thugs mistake a random guy in a Spidey costume as the real thing.

But the real Spidey is close by and begins taking out the thugs. I really do enjoy the sense of motion and action Ross Andru put into fight scenes.

Nearby, Dracula takes out a remaining thug by shattering his mind with hypnosis, which is kind of cool. He then disposes of the Maggai crime boss and tosses the man he assumes to be Maxfield overboard. Convinced he's completed his mission, he changes into a bat and flies off.

Spidey, by this time, had ended up crawling over the outer hull of the ship, looking for "Maxfield" and doubting that he'll just "drop from the clouds." In yet another sincerely funny moment, they guy drops down on top of Spidey.

With all the villains captured, dead or gone, Spidey soon finds out who the real doctor is. Maxfield is willing to overcome her fear of flying to save a life, so she accepts an offer of a rocket plane trip to New York. Aunt May is saved.

So there are a lot of little things wrong with this story--the wasted pages plugging a completely different book; the overuse of a sick Aunt May to drive a Spider Man plot; the vagueness of Dracula's motivation for killing the doctor; the absense of Spider Sense warning while walking past a vampire. But I actually like the subversion of not having the two main characters actually meet even while working at odds to one another; the humorous moments work; Andru's art is fun; and the way the action is structured (with Spidey forced to pretty much keep running around the ship searching for or rescuing fake "Maxfield") keeps the pacing swift.

Next week, we'll stay in the Marvel Universe but travel back in time to take part in the Trojan War.

Cover Cavalcade

Gene Colan's visual style was perfect for Tomb of Dracula. And Blade, in his early appearances, was much cooler than what he eventually morphed into. The whole idea of carrying around a bandoleer of wooden throwing knives to take out vampires is brilliant and made Blade unique among monster hunters.

Prehistory of Geekdom, Part 2

19th Century literature was the real gestation period for modern nerdiness, contributing stories and themes in a number of important genres. The century’s most important contribution to geekdom, though, is perhaps the development of gothic horror.


Mary Shelley, for instance, gave us Frankenstein. The origin of the novel is a classic tale in of itself—one dark and stormy night in 1816, Mary, along with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori, challenged one another to write a ghost story. Percy never really got started. Polidori turned out something that has been lost to the ages (which Mary later remembered as terrible), while Byron started a story but never finished it.


Mary, on the other hand, literally dreamed up her tale of a scientist who creates new life out of sewn-together corpses. Boy, did she start something! Full of themes and characters that strike to the heart of human nature (despite the novel’s often awkward plot construction), Frankenstein has become a part of our cultural consciousness.

In 1897, Bram Stoker gave us Dracula—the vampire who stands shoulder to shoulder with Frankenstein’s creation as one of the horror genre’s greatest creation.


Dracula is a great novel. A few of the heroes are marred by wooden characterizations, but Abraham Van Helsing is one of the coolest guys ever. And Stoker  literally creates the modern view of vampires (a view later cemented in our culture by a gazillion or so movies), coming up with a villain who is ever so slightly sympathetic, but still obviously evil.

And in between Shelley and Stoker we had Edgar Allan Poe. Gee whiz, Poe was a master of the English language, writing short stories in vivid, feverish prose that begs to be read aloud.


Try it. Grab a copy of “The Tell-Tale Heart” or “The Cask of Amontillado” and read it aloud. Even if you don’t have a real talent for reading aloud, it’s going to sound great.


A large part of the identity of us nerds come from the horror genre, which (when done right) tells a great story AND comments on the identifiable difference between good and evil. It’s a genre that has been nearly ruined over the last few decades by gross-out imagery and the absence of moral direction. But Shelley, Stoker and Poe knew how to do horror right. They knew how to scare you rather than just nauseate you.



Oh, yeah, Poe also pretty much invented the detective story—more on that in a later chapter.


Other writers—Hawthorne, Sheridan LeFanu, Guy De Mauppassant and others—also made important contributions to gothic horror. But without Shelley, Stoker and Poe, it’s quite possible that the modern comic book/SF nerd wouldn’t exist.


A world without me in it? Unthinkable.