The Tomb of Dracula #10-13

The Tomb of Dracula #10-13

Originally released in 1973

Written by Marv Wolfman

Art by Gene Colan

This past weekend was EVO, a big fighting game tournament, where the last characters were announced for the base roster of Marvel Tokon, including Blade.  While I'm familiar with the characters in this team, it seems like as good of a reason as any to go back to Blade's introduction, where instead of wearing black leather like in the Wesley Snipes movies, he dressed like this:

Blade comes across as a cowboy cop, refusing to do things by the book. (Quincy Harker had been intending to follow the vampires that Blade killed back to Dracula, but Blade's intervention ruined weeks of planning, while Blade didn't care) He's a loose cannon, but he gets the job done!

As it turns out, Dracula is on a boat with actors, princes, and various other celebrities.  He has his own plans for what to do on that ship, though first, he's going to have a snack.

Blade tracks Dracula down to the boat, though Dracula's plan seems to immediately backfire on him given that vampire lore is common knowledge; he's weakened with a cross and the people that he intends to do his bidding gang up on him instead.

Dracula is forced to flee both his intended servants and Blade, though not before blowing up the ship.  The next issue starts with the dramatic ___ of Dracula!, which is fun.

Issue 11 focuses on a man in an iron lung who seeks revenge on the people who wronged him and led to him being in this condition, using robotic arms, hired thugs, and the power of voodoo. His thugs attacked Dracula earlier, so now he wants to kill them, though by sheer coincidence, the man's final target is Quincy Harker, a friend who gave him some bad business advice.

Dracula spares Quincy Harker, feeling that he's killed enough people for one night to be satisfied, but he gives orders for the man in the iron lung to be turned into a vampire.  This leads to a twisted end for the man, cursed with a vampire's thirst, unable to move, and unable to do anything to stop the sun rising over him.

As I make my way through this series, I wonder at what point it gets incorporated into the broader Marvel universe.  So far, much like Jack Kirby's original run on the Eternals, it seems self-contained and separate from the main Marvel comics line, though as both Dracula and Blade are mainstays of the main Marvel universe, I know it will happen eventually.

Issue 12 has Edith Harker, Quincy's daughter, taken hostage as bait to lure in the rest of the main cast.  All of them survive the trap, and Blade forces Dracula to flee, but Dracula still has his twisted revenge.

To fend off the ever-growing hunger, Edith leaps from the second floor to knock herself out, and Quincy is forced to stake his own daughter to keep her from going on a bloodlust-fueled rampage. It's a tragic ending to the issue, and the art does a good job with getting around the limitations of the time period.

With this, they have extra motivation to hunt down Dracula in issue 13, to the point of hiring Scotland Yard to track unusual bat movements in the area. Dracula seems to hope that their anger will make them sloppy, though he's prepared for this occasion by hypnotizing people in the area.

Ironically, Dracula is blinded by his pride; he can turn intangible to avoid fatal wounds, but he becomes tangible again to kill Quincy Harker.  This leaves him vulnerable to being stabbed in the heart by Blade.

This isn't the final end of Dracula, naturally; the Tomb of Dracula goes for 70 issues, and he's still alive (well, as alive as an undead person can be) in Marvel comics to this day. However, this seems like as good of a place as any to stop. These were some fun issues, feeling like a Dracula-themed TV show, and it's interesting to see how the push what they can get away with while still sticking to the Comics Code.