New To You Comics #132: Grab A Stake And Enter ‘The Tomb Of Dracula’

Everyone has different tastes in comics. Here at New To You Comics, we explore that as Tony and Scott dive into comics that, well, it’s right there in the column title. While October is over, our dive into the spooky is not, as we take a leap into the Wayback machine for this one. 

Marvel Comics’ The Tomb Of Dracula ran for seventy issues from 1972 to 1979, giving the titular vampire a pretty hefty place and run at the publisher. While Gene Colan drew the entire series, it cycled through quite a few very notable writers at the beginning till it eventually became the sole domain of Marv Wolfman. For the first five issues (which we read) it was Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin, and Gardner Fox who tried to set this series in motion. 

Frank Drake, the last living mortal descendant of Dracula, travels to Transylvania in order to turn the family castle into a hot tourist attraction. Unfortunately for him, a whole love triangle issue leads to the rising of his vampiric ancestor and the loss of someone he loves. So begins one of Marvel’s most iconic horror series. 

Scott Redmond: We sure do love vampires Tony!

This is one of those classic runs that I’ve always been aware of but never really knew much about. One of those rare pieces of Marvel-related information not floating around somewhere in my brain. So I was really intrigued to give it a glance when you threw out this suggestion a few weeks ago. 

Oh boy, I forgot how wordy older comics really could be. There sure is a lot to take in here. What were your initial thoughts on these five issues?

Tony Thornley: My gosh, the writing struggled the first few issues, but this is absolutely one of those books that is carried by the art. And what incredible art it is! This book, at least for the issues we read, are an artist’s showcase, but I also think generally it’s a good to great horror story.

Scott: Even without knowing the behind-the-scenes reason (thank you internet) the changing of writers definitely feels a bit chaotic. All of them are of course well-known pros so it’s not messy. But it’s noticeable that the direction for the series was not quite as clear as one might expect. It is interesting to look at this with ‘modern eyes’ and see just how much older writers would try to work into their issues. 

Overall I kind of dig the low-key horror vibes and direction taken here. I recalled that one thing that throws me off a bit about older issues is the propensity to tell a bit more than show. I appreciate times in comics where the artwork is allowed to tell us something, saving the words/letters for other things. Here we get a ton of caption boxes, dialogue bubbles, and classic thought balloons that fill the pages at times. Telling us a ton of things.

I love to read but I’ll admit, my eyes glazed over quite a few times meaning I had to double back on a page. 

Tony: Yeah, totally. This was the 70’s which meant being wordy was in (I still joke that Todd Klein negotiated his rate per letter, and everyone liked Klein). Conway, Goodwin and Fox are all generally good writers, but all three have that tendency. But they all have a great sense of pacing, which is so crucial for a horror story. I think my biggest problem with this story (besides the swing in tone between writers) is that Frank Drake is just not a riveting protagonist. Introducing Rachel Van Helsing really helped that problem, because she’s way more interesting, and pulled Drake up alongside her quite a bit.

Scott: Fully agree with you there. Doesn’t help that his personality is all over the place swinging as much as the aforementioned writer’s tones. Not great when your protagonist is someone that as a reader you don’t entirely care if they perish or not. 

As you noted, this is just a great artist showcase and is such great art. Honestly, I don’t know if I really have seen Colan’s artwork before. It’s got that really perfect balance of sort of natural/familiar meets fantastical/horror that works for stories like this. Especially being a Marvel-style series with their whole world outside the window. Plenty of depth, detail, and roughness to play up the darker horror vibes. 

Tony: It’s kind of interesting- Colan is absolutely of the house style of the time- very similar to Neal Adams and Gil Kane. He’s got a great eye for pacing, atmosphere, and some fantastic reveals. His Dracula is larger than life, and that almost makes you want to cheer for him. It’s no wonder this series has endured like it has.

Scott: Even with the wildness and wordiness, the artwork and addition of Van Helsing that you mentioned are enough to get me to keep going. Knowing that Colan is there for the long haul definitely helps. I’m intrigued to see how the series grew once Wolfman was there to anchor it all on the writing side. 

Tony: Oh yeah, I’m definitely going to keep reading. Got to at least make it to Blade’s debut before his new movie!

Scott: So what do we have coming up next?

Tony: You and I are back next week with the absolute classic Kingdom Come from Mark Waid and Alex Ross. It’s been years since I revisited it, and I’m excited to see if it holds up.