Essential Tomb Of Dracula Volume 3 Tpb

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Summary: The end of Comicdom's Number 1 Fear Magazine
Review: Dracula first appeared in the Marvel Universe in the early 1970s when "The Tomb of Dracula" first appeared. Penciler Gene Colan, the perfect artist for the comic book, was there from the beginning, but Tom Palmer, who would ink the vast majority of issues did not arrive until the third issue, and writer Marv Wolfman did not take over the scripting duties until the seventh issue. By that point most of the cast of characters had been established: Frank Drake, the American descendant of Dracula himself, Rachel Van Helsing, the great-granddaughter of the professor in Bram Stoker's novel, and Taj, her mute servant from India. But Wolfman immediately added the final member of the core group, Quincy Harker, the son of Jonathan and Mina Harker, now an old man in a wheelchair (because of an encounter with the Count), who brings a scientific approach to vampire slaying.

More importantly, Wolfman took the long view towards the characters and the comic book. There is an inherent problem in that your basic comic book story for "The Tomb of Dracula" requires the heroes NOT to kill the villain, otherwise the comic book turns to dust along with Dracula. Wolfman and Colan portrayed Dracula as a vampire with a plan, who was out to do more than kill the vampire slayers before they killed him. This comic book took its time, a fact that was best indicated by the Doctor Sun plotline, where for issue after issue we were treated to a page or less of scenes showing Chinese minions acting out the orders of the mysterious Doctor Sun. Wolfman milked the set up for all it was worth before finally revealing the Doctor Sun was (gasp!) a disembodied brain. Wolfman also created off beat characters for a vampire comic book, such as Hannibal King, the Vampire Detective, Blade (#58, "Undead by Daylight!"), and the quirky nebbish Harold H. Harold, author of "The Vampire Conspiracy" (#56).

In the first story in this collection, "Where Soars the Silver Surfer" (#50), we have one of the few times that Dracula interacted with other characters from the Marvel Universe. Previously it had been the Werewolf from "Werewolf by Night" and Dr. Strange, both of whom make sense for a horror comic, while the Silver Surfer is the rare exception of a more traditional superhero. However, it is his purity in contrast to the vampire's cursed soul that makes their conflict particularly dramatic. In the end, the idea that "The Tomb of Dracula" is out of the mainstream of the Marvel Universe is preserved.

The end-game for the comic book that plays out in these issues has to do with Janus, the son of Dracula born to his wife, Domini. When Dracula got married and his new bride conceived a child as a result of an arcane ritual, that was certainly strange enough. But Wolfman was interested in playing out the battle between good and evil on a larger scale, which culminated in a confrontation between Dracula and Satan himself ("Life After Undeath," #64) at which point the vampire is turned back into a human being by the Prince of Darkness. However, do not fear: the final fate of Dracula will come down to a last battle between the Lord of Vampires and the humans who have been pursuing him for a half-dozen years in the pages of these comic books.

As good as Wolfman was in plotting these tales he was helped by having the perfect artist for "The Tomb of Dracula" in Gene Colan. Nobody could have illustrated Dracula's transformations better than Colan, with his swirling lines as the vampire morphed into a giant bat. Add rain into the picture, as Colan does on the cover and throughout #60, and you ample proof of this perfection. Palmer's best ink work was done over Neal Adam's pencils, but his partnership with Colan on this comic book is a more substantial body of work and when another inker stepped in, the results were always less impressive. Fortunately, in Volume 3 the only example from this is when Bob McCleod inks Colan's pencils for a "Tomb of Dracula Magazine" story, which ends up being arguably the best of the non-Palmer inked Colan stories because it was intended for a black & white magazine.

The cover art is taken from the cover of the final issue of "The Tomb of Dracula," #70. In addition to the final issues of the comic book (#50-70), there are also stories from the black & white "Tomb of Dracula Magazine," which, the back of this collection is quick to say, were "unrated by the Comics Code Authority!" Just so you know, Volume 1 of the "Essential Tomb of Dracula" contains issues #1-25 of "The Tomb of Dracula," along with a cross-over story in "Werewolf By Night" #15 and the "Giant-Size Chillers" #1 story that introduced Lilith, Dracula's daguther. Volume 2 has issues #26-49 of "Tomb of Dracula," a cross-over with "Dr. Strange" #14, and a quartet of less than stellar stories from "Giant-Size Dracula" #2-5. You really have to get all three volumes so that you can appreciate how Wolfman, Colan, and Palmer crafted what is still from a qualitative standpoint the best "fear" comic book since the days of E.C.