Talking With Matt Wagner And Joe Kelley About ‘Dracula Book IV: The Undead’

With Matt Wagner and Joe Kelley bringing down the coffin lid on their Dracula magnum opus, currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, I just had to ask them about the new graphic novel and how it will all end. Needless to say, they didn’t tell me that but I did get excellent answers back. 

Olly MacNamee: With Dracula’s Hellish origins told in Book I, and a closer look at the Brides of Dracula in Book II, with the adaptation of Stoker’s novel taking up the third volume, what can rabid fans expect from this final volume? After all, even though he’s exposed to the sun at the end of the last book, we don’t see him burn, do we?

Matt Wagner: With Book IV: The Undead, we’re reaching beyond the ending of Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel.  You noted that Dracula’s demise in the book’s grand finale seems a bit … unresolved. Throughout the course of the novel, Professor Van Helsing describes in detail how you supposedly destroy a vampire and then, in the exciting climax of the narrative … the British heroes really don’t attack Dracula in those prescribed manners. But you’re misremembering the specifics of that scene; the sun isn’t rising, it’s setting. The frantic actions of Jonathan Harker and company are an effort to dispose of the vampire lord before the sun sinks over the mountains and he regains all the powers of his vampiric might. Additionally, in Stoker’s novel, sunlight doesn’t destroy vampires … it merely robs them of their supernatural strengths.  The now-commonly accepted trope of vampires bursting into flame and ashes by the rays of the sun is a concept first introduced in the 1922 plagiarized adaptation of the original novel, F. W. Murneau’s Nosferatu. That was a German film, and this idea of fairies and trolls being dispelled, turned to stone or otherwise defeated is found throughout Germanic myths. So, yes…in our fourth and final volume of our epic saga, Dracula survives! We reveal how he escaped destruction at the hands of his enemies … and what sort of reactions this blood-thirsty, aristocratic monster might then pursue.

Joe Kelley: The blackness of Dracula’s soul was there before he drank a drop of blood. I get to draw that. 

MacNamee: You’ve known each other for a good, good while now. So, how did the conversation come about to adapt and expand on Dracula in the first place? 

Wagner: I’ve been a Dracula fan for most of my life, and I’d spent well over a decade trying to figure out some new and unique take on this overly-adapted and expanded narrative. And when I finally hit on the idea of not doing yet another adaptation of the original narrative but, instead, using the many hints and details found in the original script to tell the tales of Dracula’s history that surround and hide in the shadows of the book … I knew I finally had my inspiration.  And, luckily…I knew the perfect artist to draw this ambitious saga. As you said, Kelley and I had known each other for what seemed like eons and we’d always vowed to someday work on something together. But I think we both instinctively knew we wanted such a collaboration to be a really significant project … something of serious length and weight to which we could both fully commit.  And, luckier still…when I contacted Kel and said, “Hey … I think I have the perfect idea for us,” he was immediately on board. The timing literally couldn’t have been better for either of us.

Kelley: I read a post Matt posted that he’d been censored on some drawing he’d done. I was undergoing something similar so voiced my grouchy understanding of how he felt.  Matt then responded with the question about doing something with him. I said yes immediately. I mean, it’s Matt Wagner.

Grouchiness can lead to the very best stuff.

MacNamee: In Stoker’s novel, we never hear directly from Dracula himself. Yet, here in these graphic novels, he is the narrator. How has that allowed you to expand on the story, the legend of Dracula?

Wagner: That was another aspect that I knew would distinguish our version from the original. Stoker’s novel is written in an epistolary style, meaning there is no omniscient narrator and all the events are presented in the form of letters, private journals, news articles and such. And, yes … the only voice missing from all those different accounts is Dracula’s himself. This opened a wide narrative door in having the opportunity to tell the monster’s tale by his own reckoning. And he is definitely a monster; there is no romantic aspect to the character in Stoker’s novel, even though this is often the approach taken in so many of the cinematic versions. Dracula has no tender feelings for either Lucy or Mina in the book; he treats them with the same megalomaniacal disdain that he treats everyone else. And this was really enticing to me … the chance to show that, even though he is a monster, he’s also a human, and I wanted to make his evil recognizable on a human level.

Kelley: I always wanted to draw a totally irredeemably evil scene. Matt gave me 452 pages in four Graphic Novels of that dream. I would like to think Vlad, wherever he is, would read these and not impale us.

MacNamee: And will this fourth volume be the be all and end all? After all, he is an immortal? 

Wagner: That possibility … remains to be seen. Certainly, you haven’t seen the last of my collaborating with Kelley.  We’re already talking about what comes next for both our collaboration and Orlok Press.

Kelley: I think these four volumes are a perfect epic tale and well told. To me it’s over, unless Matt says,“Hey Kel, what if Dracula did this?”

MacNamee: Out of all the classic 19th Century, what is it about Dracula that makes him so seductive to readers and creators like yourselves? 

Wagner: As I mentioned earlier, I’ve always been a Dracula fan. Out of the three human-based monster archetypes — Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman — I’ve always favored the vampire lord. Part of that stems from the character’s elegance combined with the distinctly sexual overtones … but it’s also due to the fact that Dracula is the only monster that doesn’t lament his fate; he relishes his monstrosity and shows no remorse for his evil actions. That’s truly terrifying!  And, as you noted earlier, he’s immortal, so that fact provides a wide-open tableau for storytelling.

Kelley: Because this character scared me badly as a little kid. And even though Dracula movies and stories gave me that trauma, I kept coming back for more. That’s a powerful effect, and I wanted to try my hand at it.

MacNamee: And you have Jose Villarrubia working on colours on this. What does he bring to the table?

Wagner: From the very beginning of this project, we knew we wanted to pay homage to the fabulous horror comics that we both loved and found inspirational from the ’70s — Creepy, Eerie, Tomb of Dracula, Son of Satan, and of course, Heavy Metal. We first thought of asking José to join us not only due to his long and accomplished career in the industry but also from his more recent work restoring Bernie Wrightson’s original run on Swamp Thing for DC and his similar efforts on the complete Richard Corben library from Dark Horse Comics. I’d long had the opinion that most colorists don’t get how to color Kelley’s work — “His art is dark and moody. I’m gonna color it dark and moody.” And my reaction was always … “No! Kelley’s already drawn the dark and moody … we need bright colors to fully show off all those shadows he’s drawn.”  And José got that notion right away … he also understands the source of our inspiration. His colors on this project really recapture that flavor we were hoping to achieve. One incredibly subtle detail he added at his own volition … he colors all of the gutters between the panels a slightly warm off-white. It perfectly enhances the aesthetic we were shooting for by making the book feel like it’s printed on old-school comic-book paper!

MacNamee: I’d be struck through the heart if I didn’t ask you both about the rewards available for fans. So, what you got, fellas?

Wagner: We don’t really do reward tiers on our campaigns. But we have offered a special something extra with every volume; we’ve two different portfolios and a gorgeous Gicleé print. For Book IV, we’ve got something that looks great, is amazingly cool and, again, captures that ’70s vibe that we embrace … a Black Light poster!  We’ll have both a signed and an unsigned edition available.

MacNamee: One last one from me. I’m a huge fan of Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series. Do you have your own favourite takes on Dracula, either in prose or other media?

Wagner: I actually make a brief reference to Newman’s popular series in Book III: The Count, wherein Dracula is speaking to his new bankers and speculates that perhaps Britain’s long-widowed queen might be in the market for a new husband.  I’m particularly fond of Elizabeth Kostova’s 2005 novel The Historian, which is a lengthy tale and a creepy slow burn that takes its sweet time to even reveal that it is, in fact, a Dracula novel. When I was younger, I also enjoyed sci-fi author Fred Saberhagen’s various novels that presented a fairly sympathetic take on the character.

Kelley: Hammer’s Dracula, Prince of Darkness, which gets even better with time and Marvel’s great Tomb of Dracula series. 

MacNamee: Matt, Kelley, fangs for your time, and all the best for the campaign.