I suppose we should probably begin today’s post by acknowledging that the battle between two of Marvel Comics’ biggest horror stars — the vampiric Count Dracula and the lycanthropic Jack Russell — that ran through that duo’s respective titles in November and December of 1973 wasn’t quite the first time that two of Marvel Comics’ monstrous headliners faced off with one another.  That distinction belongs instead to Frankenstein #8, which beat ToD #18 to the stands by just one month. Even so, while that comics’ Gary Friedrich-John Buscema tale certainly had its charms, it was set in the 19th century, and didn’t cross over from one monster’s title to the other’s; instead, the dust-up between Drac and the Frankenstein Monster concluded in the following bi-monthly issue of Frankenstein itself, which came out in December.  For those two reasons, it didn’t feel quite as special as the almost-concurrent Tomb of Dracula/Werewolf by Night crossover — at least, it didn’t to your humble blogger, either then or now.  (Naturally, your own mileage may vary, but for better or worse, the Dracula/Werewolf event is the one I’ve opted to write about.) 

Behind an appropriately dramatic (if not quite story-accurate) cover by Gil Kane and Tom Palmer, the crossover’s first chapter — crafted by the usual ToD creative team of writer Marv Wolfman, penciller Gene Colan, and inker Palmer — opens with a similarly symbolic splash:

The next page picks up pretty much where November’s issue of Werewolf by Night had left off, with Jack Russell and his new girlfriend, the mysterious psychic named Topaz, en route to Jack’s ancestral home within that region of Europe known to the world as…

If you were already a regular reader of Werewolf by Night in 1973, you should have felt right at home after reading this scene; conversely, if you were a regular reader of Tomb of Dracula who’d never so much as glanced at an issue of WbN before this, you now had enough basic information about Jack and Topaz for you to feel decently well-oriented regarding their identities and motivations.

The next page, alas, wasn’t quite as accommodating to the WbN fan who might be sampling ToD for the first time:

The Tomb of Dracula newbie might have wondered about what’s brought Dracula back home after several years away; they might also have been curious about “the veteran vampire hunters called Drake and Van Helsing“, whom the captions tell us are on the very same train as Jack and Topaz, but whom, rather oddly, never appear on panel anywhere in this issue.  (Which, I feel obliged to note, allowed Colan and Palmer to sidestep the tricky business of keeping the red-headed Jack Russell visually distinct from the similarly ginger Frank Drake, or from doing the same in regards to Topaz and Rachel van Helsing, both whom are graced with long blonde tresses… not that I’m saying that’s the reason that Frank and Rachel are conspicuous by their absence, you understand.)

And you, faithful reader, may be wondering about some of this story’s background as well, especially since we haven’t checked in with Tomb of Dracula on the blog since issue #10 back in April.  So, to keep you from having to dig your old ToD back issues out of the longbox, here’s the skinny:  The way vampirism works (in these stories, anyway), Drac has to sleep during the day in a special coffin that includes at least a dollop of his native soil.  Sometime before issue #17, the Count’s U.K.-based enemies had located and destroyed every one of the coffins he had squirreled away on the island of Britain, forcing him to flee home to the old country to secure a new supply… though with two of those enemies, Rachel van Helsing and Frank Drake, in hot pursuit.  (Dracula had actually ridden into Transylvania on the same train as the “four passengers” already mentioned, but was able to elude his pursuers before the last issue’s end, and has evidently flown the rest of the way to his castle.)

Now that that’s clear, let’s skip past the next page’s further ruminations by Dracula, as well as a very brief scene featuring two other Dracula hunters (Quincy Harker and Blade) that’s not germane to our main storyline, and rejoin Jack Russell and Topaz as they traverse “an ill-lit country road in the central square of Transylvania” (um, “central square”?  Marv Wolfman doesn’t think that Transylvania is the name of a town, does he?  Surely not…) towards the lighted windows of an establishment whose hanging sign proclaims it to be “Ye Olde Boot Inn” (a decidedly English-flavored moniker for an Eastern European hostelry, but whatever)…

Speaking of English flavor, “Scratcher” sure gives the impression of being a British tar — which rather begs the question of what he’s doing hanging out in the middle of a thoroughly land-locked region such as Transylvania… but, again, whatever.

Opting to ignore Scratcher’s not-so-veiled threats, Jack and Topaz retire to their room.  Then, some indeterminate time later (though definitely after moonrise)…

That line in the last panel above about the “very life” fading from Scratcher Martin’s eyes might give a reader the impression that the unlucky sailor has just dropped dead from sheer fright — but upon turning the page, that reader will learn that nope, Scratcher is alive and kicking.  And threatening Topaz with his knife, besides… though that doesn’t dissuade the Werewolf from lunging at him, knocking him out the door and into a wooden banister that promptly breaks — thereby sending the two figures plummeting into the inn’s common room…

Jack Russell’s feral alter ego had actually killed a minimum of people up to this point; while his adversaries tended not to survive their encounters, the Werewolf himself was not directly responsible for their deaths, as often as not.  So it’s a little jarring that Wolfman chooses to have him flat-out slaughter Scratcher Martin, who, while clearly an unsavory sort (the man is, at the least, a would-be rapist), hasn’t actually killed or even seriously harmed anyone, so far as we know.  Perhaps the writer — who was also scripting Werewolf by Night at this time — was keen to demonstrate that, in his opinion, the Werewolf was and should remain a horror character, rather than be handled as some sort of “supernatural superhero”… as anyone who’d read Jack Russell’s joint adventure with Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up #12 six months back might be coming to think of him.

It’s kind of a shame that Dracula chooses this moment to attack, since I would have loved to have seen how Topaz’s conversation with “the authorities” might have gone: “Hello, officer?  This furry fellow on my arm just killed a man, but, you see, he’s actually my boyfriend, and he’s not really guilty of murder because, well…”

This would probably be a good place to note that, while early issues of both Tomb of Dracula and its black-and-white companion title Dracula Lives had both implied that Dracula had been out of action for most of the last seventy years or so — ever since the climactic events of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, basically — in more recent months the folks at Marvel had realized that that premise was unnecessarily limiting, and had established (in ToD #15) that the events that put the Lord of Vampires’ staked skeleton in a coffin in his castle (as shown in ToD #1) had actually taken place as recently as 1969.  So, yeah, it makes sense that the good citizens of “the village of Transylvania” would have continued to be on alert even before Drac’s most recent local resurrection, and have those “garlic-drenched ropes” ready to hang.  (As for the young lady who’s apparently gone out walking alone at night without so much as a cross necklace as protection… um, maybe she’s another tourist?)

And, yes, that “village” line sure makes it look like Wolfman really does think that Transylvania is a single small community, rather than a country-sized geographical region.  But as soon as we turn the page, the first caption we read calls that conclusion into question:

“…the large expanse of Transylvania…”  OK, so maybe our author doesn’t actually believe that Transylvania’s borders are limited to one small village.  But it sure looks like he thinks that that single, otherwise-unnamed village, some forests, mountains, and other countryside, and a few manors and castles pretty much account for the whole shebang, which is a pretty ill-informed way to write about a region of almost 39,000 square miles, inhabited by millions of people.  (Before anyone objects on the grounds that Earth-616’s European geography isn’t identical to our own globe’s, yes, I do understand that Latveria and Symkaria and the rest of Marvel’s fictional locales have to be wedged in there somehow; that said, the geography can’t be that different, and still be recognizable as Earth’s-as-we-know-it.)  Granted, they didn’t have the Internet way back in 1973, but I’m reasonably sure that every branch of the New York Public Library had at least one set of up-to-date encyclopedias available for reference; so, no excuse.

But to return to out story… Jack tells Topaz that he’s looking for “something — anything — to fill in the many pieces that are misplaced in my life.”  He goes on to briefly review the little he knows about his father (via a flashback to scenes previously presented in Marvel Spotlight #2), and then…

It’s a little unclear — OK, maybe more than a little — as to how and why Jack and Topaz are so surprised to see Castle Dracula looming on the horizon.  Surely such a large, landscape-dominating structure is visible from the windows of the ordinary, above-ground windows of Russoff Manor, as well as from this weird (and seemingly pointless) secret cave?  I’m afraid we’ll have to chalk this up to yet another example of Wolfman’s uncharacteristically sloppy scripting in this issue.

But, moving on… upon rising from his coffin, Dracula notes with satisfaction that his mission has been accomplished; multiple new coffins, all “filled with the sacred earth” have been prepared, with several already on their way to England.  But things are going to be different from now on, Drac declares, vowing that he’ll no longer hide in cemeteries:  “I am a count — a prince — and as such, dignity must be mine –”

If the previous two pages look a little “off” to you, there’s a good reason for that.  This issue was produced at a time when, as a cost-cutting move, Marvel had their artists turn one page sideways and draw it to be reproduced as two pages — so that they could appear to be delivering 19 pages of art and story to consumers while only paying their creative personnel for 18.  Often, the art and lettering on such pages look oddly “magnified”, as is the case here.

And so wraps up part one of the Tomb of Dracula/Werewolf by Night crossover.  While I’ve been fairly harsh in regards to what I consider to have been some pretty careless writing on Marv Wolfman’s part here, I’d hate to leave you with the impression that I don’t still find lots to enjoy in “Enter: Werewolf by Night”, fifty years after I first read it (at which time I probably had few, if any, criticisms).  Of course, if you’ve got a taste for the Universal Studios brand of classic Gothic horror, there’s only so far wrong you can go with a scenario that pits Dracula against the Werewolf in Transylvania, especially with Gene Colan and Tom Palmer on hand to illustrate it.

That said, I think it’s fair to hope that the second and final chapter of our story will be more of an all-around creative success, don’t you?  Join me next month to see if Marv Wolfman, Mike Ploog, and Frank Chiaramonte all manage to rise to the occasion, as we take a look at Werewolf by Night #15.