The story told within the pages of this issue of Tomb of Dracula is, for the most part, a self-contained narrative; what’s often referred to as a “done in one”. That said, it’s still one episode in an ongoing serial continuity, which means that it inevitably makes reference to past events — and thus, to help us make the most of this look back, we’ll start by briefly reviewing a few relevant story beats that have transpired since the last time we checked in with Count Dracula and his supporting cast, via the two-part crossover between Tomb of Dracula #18 and Werewolf by Night #15 covered here late last year.
Doctor Sun explains himself in a panel from Tomb of Dracula #21 (Jun., 1974).
As you’ll hopefully recall, the aftermath of that crossover found Dracula and one of his greatest foes, Rachel van Helsing, stranded together in the snowy Transylvanian Alps. The two found themselves forced to cooperate with each other to survive, though “survival” in this case lasted just long enough for them (and Rachel’s fellow vampire hunter, Frank Drake) to be taken prisoner by servants of the diabolical Doctor Sun — a mad-genius-brain-in-a-box determined to usurp Dracula’s status as the lord of all vampires. That conflict concluded in issue #21, with an explosion in Sun’s underground lair that blew up a mountain, and seemingly ended the threat of Dracula forever — or so Rachel and Frank believed. In fact, Drac had escaped destruction by turning into a mist (as Dr. Sun had escaped as well, in his case by teleporting himself away)… but he’d quickly decided that it would serve his purposes quite well if his enemies believed him to be dead. Four issues later, all three characters had made their way back to the United Kingdom, but the fact of Dracula’s survival remained hidden from those who’d dedicated their lives to his destruction.
That’s not quite all you need to know to fully appreciate ToD #25, but it’s certainly enough to get us started. So let’s now turn past the cover by Gil Kane and Tom Palmer (and maybe John Romita), to see what the ongoing regular creative team of Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan, and Palmer have in store for us within this issue’s pages…
Okay, P.I. Hannibal King’s opening monologue may be heavily clichéd, but it efficiently serves its obvious purpose of letting us know right away that our storytellers will be operating in a hard-boiled detective fiction mode this go-around. And it’s also worth noting a couple of aspects that set this scene apart from the usual tropes of this particular subgenre, at least so far as 1970s American comics are concerned: first, the woman our white narrator is ogling happens to be Black; second, our setting isn’t the typical U.S. metropolis such as Los Angeles or New York, but rather the ancient city of London, England (though that particular fact won’t be made apparent until the story’s next page)…
Adrianne Walters goes on to explain how she and her new husband, Fred, had just gotten themselves ready for bed when there was a knock on the door. An irritated Fred went to see who could possibly be bothering them at such a time, and was told that it was the apartment’s landlord, coming to check on a short in the wiring. “Blast!” said Fred; and then, fatally, added: “Come in!”
Back in July, 1974, the sudden appearance within King’s flashback of this “tall dude, with long white hair” would have set off alerts for Tomb of Dracula‘s regular readers — those who’d’ been following the book as far back as issue #13 (Oct., 1973), at any rate. But since we didn’t cover that particular comic on this blog, it behooves us to take a moment to share one particular sequence from it that’s relevant to our current story, lest the significance of this moment pass anyone by.
Tomb of Dracula #10 had introduced the vampire slayer named Blade, but hadn’t provided any kind of background for him; his origin wasn’t revealed until his third appearance, inToD #13, where Blade opened up to his fellow Dracula-hunters — who, in addition to the aforementioned Rachel van Helsing and Frank Drake, included their leader, Quincy Harker. After Harker — whose daughter, Edith, had very recently been slain by the vampire lord — solemnly declared that they’d have time to mourn their losses only after their quest to destroy Dracula was over, Blade responded thusly:
And now that you all know everything that my younger self knew about the White-Haired Vampire back in the summer of ’74, let’s get back to Tomb of Dracula #25…
Cover art by John Romita.
Okay, here’s a second flashback, right on the heels of the last one — and like its predecessor, it may need some ‘spainin’ for anyone out there who’s either never read Giant-Size Chillers “featuring The Curse of Dracula” #1 (Jun., 1974). or simply hasn’t perused it in a decade or five. The comic in question was the first issue of a new, plus-sized companion title to Tomb of Dracula (its title would be changed to Giant-Size Dracula with its second quarterly issue), which had marked the occasion of its debut with the introduction of a major new figure in Marvel’s Dracula mythos: Lilith, the previously unknown daughter of our favorite vampiric count. As readers of that book back in March had learned, Lilith was the child of Dracula’s first, loveless marriage; years after her mother’s suicide, Lilith had been transformed by a Roma sorceress into a unique form of vampire who lacked most of the traditional weaknesses, such as sunlight and crucifixes; she had also been blessed (or cursed) with the ability to return from death through possessing the body of another woman who hated her own father as much as Lilith hated hers.
Text by Marv Wolfman; art by Gene Colan and Frank Chiaramonte.
This latter attribute was responsible for Lilith coming back into Dracula’s un-life in the present day, soon after the latter’s return to England. A pregnant young woman named Angel O’Hara became Lilith’s latest host when her father struck and killed her boyfriend; after taking Angel’s vengeance on the unfortunate Mr. O’Hara, Lilith then sought out her own father, hoping to put their past enmity behind them so she could share in his power… but was rejected.
Cover art by Boris Vallejo.
That was the first appearance of Lilith, and also the last — at least until June, when she’d turned up starring in her own strip in the sixth issue of Marvel’s black-and-white horror anthology, Vampire Tales. But that first solo story showed both Lilith and her unwitting human host, Angel O’Hara to have taken up residence in New York City — a change of locale that could have been explained in that very narrative, obviously, but which was detailed here in Tomb of Dracula #25, instead. Perhaps Marvel was concerned that Dracula fans who only followed his exploits in the color comics would be wondering whatever happened to Lilith after that one-off in Giant-Size Chillers… or maybe they figured it wouldn’t hurt to give Vampire Tales #6 a plug. (Or, of course, it could have been both.)
In any event, that’s the last momentum-busting flashback we’ll have to deal with in this post, I promise. So let’s return — again — to “Night of the Blood Stalker!”
King makes a hasty exit through a window, and then proceeds to look up the London address for Wyandanch Limited in a phone book (remember those?). Noting with some interest that the business is identified as an international shipping concern, our private eye heads next for the docks…
O’Brien seems pretty calm and collected for a guy with a bullet in his right shoulder; I suppose we can chalk that up to the uncanny power of Dracula’s will…
…though, on the other hand, when King grabs O’Brien’s already wounded arm — and then breaks it — the man completely folds, revealing to the detective that earlier that same day, he’d sent three of Dracula’s coffins to a warehouse on Kensington Place; from there, they’re supposed to be shipped to Norway and Denmark. Leaving O’Brien behind, King heads directly to the warehouse…
The vampire attack is led by one of the two female vampire, who seizes King and tosses him into a stack of shipping crates; unfortunately for her, the broken boxes provide her would-be victim with a ready-made wooden stake…
I’m very curious to know if there’s anyone out there reading this post who was previously unfamiliar with this story — as well as with its main protagonist — who saw that last-panel twist coming. Because my younger self most definitely did not, back in July of ’74.
Of course, upon a re-reading “Night of the Blood Stalker!”, all of the clues are there, once one knows where to look. Marv Wolfman has been dropping regular hints as to Hannibal King’s true nature at least since the scene in the bar where his reflection should be visible in the mirror, but isn’t, not to mention the one directly after that, where he shrugs off being clubbed on the back of the head with a heavy metal crowbar a lot faster than any normal man could. Then, of course, there’s the way he has King acknowledge the existence of the “Welcome” sign at the shipping company’s office (vampires have to be invited in, you know), as well as Dracula’s multiple references to himself as King’s “master“, while characterizing the detective’s opposition as “rebellion“. The clues are all very clear in their meaning on a second read-through; on the first, however, one has likely been carried along so quickly by Wolfman’s propulsive narrative (well, propulsive once he gets past the “White-Haired Vamp” and “Lilith” interludes, anyway), as well as so completely absorbed in Gene Colan and Tom Palmer’s superbly atmospheric, Gothic-and-noir-blending artwork, to catch on to what later seems to have been hiding in plain sight.
And for anyone who might object that, as a vampire, Hannibal King shouldn’t be able to rebel against Dracula, Wolfman is actually playing fair on that score as well — because, as will become clear over the next several issues, someone or something is draining Dracula’s powers… an ongoing mystery which will serve to drive the series’ central storyline for the next year and a half, before concluding with a final battle against the perpetrator of the power-leeching, Drac’s old adversary Doctor Sun. It’s just one example of the way in which the writer was playing a long game through much of his 63-issue Tomb of Dracula run.
Of course, this entire issue showcases Marv Wolfman’s devotion to the long game. As has already been noted, the flashback cameo of the white-haired vampire early in the story already connected the present story with the origin of Blade, as told back in ToD #13. But with this comic’s final panel, that connection is shown to be far deeper than was originally apparent. Hannibal King may not know that he and Blade share a common quest for vengeance, but the reader does — and that reader also knows that the two characters will inevitably meet and team up against their mutual enemy.
And Wolfman, Colan, and Palmer would tell that story — but not until after the conclusion of their Doctor Sun saga. Hannibal King wouldn’t even appear again until issue #44, where he finally met Blade; the duo’s struggle against the white-haired vamp (aka Deacon Frost) then carried on through to reach its climax in Tomb of Dracula #53 — well over two years after ToD #25 first planted the seed. Now that’s what I call a long game.
Wolfman’s approach to serial storytelling clearly rewarded the attentive, longtime reader; still, it would be a mistake to infer from that that you had to have read every issue of Tomb of Dracula from the beginning to come in and enjoy a story. Along with the long, often overlapping story arcs and liberal use of subplots, Wolfman also could craft satisfying narratives that got their business done in three, or two, or even in one issue. Indeed, “Night of the Blood Stalker!” itself, for all that it calls back to previous events and sets up future ones, works just fine as a standalone tale. Naturally, not all of the book’s shorter stories were as terrific as this one; still, thanks to the support Wolfman received from his his consistently excellent artistic collaborators, Colan and Palmer, they were always at least entertaining. To my mind, that goes a long way to justifying not only the claim staked (sorry) by Tomb of Dracula in its prime to being “Comicdom’s Number 1 Fear Magazine”, but also the title’s enduring reputation as one of the best comic books to come out of the 1970s, period.
Another great review of another great issue, Alan! Alas, another one that I missed back in the day as I wasn’t yet collecting ToD regularly, although I did become familiar with Hannibal King in later issues. I loved how Wolfman often mingled touches of humor with the regular horror, drama and pathos of his stories, laying on thick the standard tropes or cliches of hard-boiled detective stories with a few twists. Already knowing that King was a vampire, the ending wasn’t a surprise to me when I first read this, but likely if I’d been reading it without such knowledge, the abundant clues would’ve gone over my head until that last confirming panel!
Also, although at this point no one, not even Wolfman, knew how this series would ultimately play out, in the end it did reach a definitive conclusion and overall, IMO, mostly works as a long form, episodic narrative, much like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Robinson’s Starman series of later decades. But, even if inadvertently and only upon taking up the series initiated by several other writers in the first several issues, among U.S. mainstream comics appears Tomb of Dracula was the first to really have the feeling of a sort of novel, with all the various shorter stories folding into the longer epic. Several other writers at Marvel strike me as attempting similar, such as MacGregor in his Black Panther and Killraven runs, and perhaps Kirby with his 4th World series, although those were all cut short due to the whims of the business. Wolfman lucked out, and even if ToD was cancelled earlier than he might have hoped, he still had enough time to provide a satisfying conclusion. But that’s still several years away from 1974. and hopefully we can all discuss that more when the time comes if you kept on collecting ToD until the very end!
Englehart, Wolfman, Claremont, all masters at writing the long form story while keeping individual issues worth reading
She’s just briefly mentioned in one of the digressions to the main entry above, but did Angel O’Hara have the longest pregnancy in comics history? She was in that delicate condition when we first met her getting possessed by Lilith in Giant Size Chillers #1 in 1974 and still is when she and Lilith are finally separated in the black & white Tomb of Dracula magazine in 1980 (#5, I believe). Even given the Marvel sliding time scale, that’s an awfully long time for the poor girl to be with child.
While Angel O’Hara was pregnant, the Celestials arrived and departed, the new X-Men were formed, Jean Grey became Phoenix, the X-Men were considered dead for what seemed like forever, Phoenix devoured a planet, Warlock had that whole Magus business, Howard the Duck arrived on Earth and ran for president, Godzilla came and went, the Champions came and went, the Micronauts overthrew Baron Karza, Dracula himself got married, had another kid that miraculously grew into an adult, Drac gets killed a couple of times but gets better, etc. etc. Hell of a nine months!
Fortunately for her, as far as I know the last words anybody spoke of her after Lilith was separated from her was something along the lines of “she can go have her baby in peace,” which seems to have been the case, since I don’t think she or her child have ever been mentioned again. I’m sure that was a relief for her.
(That story also should’ve ended Lilith’s career of needing to possess people, but Chris Claremont can’t leave any sort of mind control alone so he completely ignored that development and had her possess Kitty Pryde in that idiotic X-Men annual where for reasons known only to himself he decided to take a crap on Rachel Van Helsing’s apparent happy ending from TOD – to this day one of my single most hated comic issues.)
You are not alone in despising Rachel’s gratuitous death.
I completely agree about hating X-Men Annual 6 (1982) and specifically, Claremont’s treatment of Rachel Van Helsing. What is so disappointing about this work by Claremont is that it stands in direct contradiction to so much other good work that he had done around the same time. He had been the writer who had taken over Ms Marvel after only 2 issues by Gerry Conway and spent the rest of that series until its abrupt cancellation to turn Carol Danvers/Ms Marvel into a strong and credible character. And of course he was justifiably upset when Avengers 200 treated Ms Marvel poorly so clearly wrote Avengers Annual 10 (1981) with its angry screed against the Avengers in the final scene as a response to the mess of Avengers 200. What is not understandable and is not acceptable is only one year later, Claremont’s horrendous treatment of Rachel Van Helsing, who is one of the earliest examples of strong women in comics from her first appearance in Tomb of Dracula 3 throughout the entire TOD series including an excellent character study in TOD 19 which demonstrated that Rachel would never allow Dracula to kill her without finding a way for them to both be killed. After all, Rachel saw Dracula murder her own parents! I was shocked and very disappointed by that X-Men Annual and by the easy way Dracula killed Rachel and made her his slave. I could not believe this story was written by the same person who had made a career of writing strong female characters. As the mid to late 1970s progressed and I was in college, I started to drop more and more comics, and Tomb of Dracula was one of the few comics I continued to buy until the very end. I believe it was one of the very best series Marvel produced (not necessarily perfect of course but the art was always outstanding). But when I think about it now, I am still shocked at how disrespectfully Claremont treated the character of Rachel. He usually did his research but apparently not here (or else, sorry to say, he didn’t care).
Regarding TOD 25, it was an excellent classic issue, and no, I did not guess at the time that Hannibal King was a vampire so the end was a surprise. Of course I felt pretty foolish when I read all the clues in a later letter column. In retrospect it was a classic bit of misdirection on Wolfman’s part, telling us there was a mystery here (why was this man killed), when actually Dracula never seemed to need much reason (other than blood) to kill people. The real mystery was why are we spending so much time with this new character and where are other supporting characters? Wolfman wanted to create a new character, a vampire detective, who we were later told only takes blood from blood banks or hospitals and avoids killing people. It is also suggested but never clarified that Deacon Frost is an unusual vampire (perhaps explaining why HK is also an unusual vampire who can also “rebel” against Dracula) and wants to battle Dracula, but that never happened. Also after Deacon Frost was eliminated in TOD 53, I don’t believe Hannibal King was seen again in the TOD series, so it’s not clear what other plans Marv had for him. It was nice to be reminded of TOD 25, but now have to do my best to forget about that unfortunate X-Men Annual, which demonstrates that Marv was correct that Dracula should not cross over with Marvel heroes.
King being able to resist Dracula’s control may also be because he was turned by the white-haired vampire (another of the clues to King being a vampire is that the “blasted vampire killed everyone inside” – which would include King) rather than by Dracula or one of his progeny.
There was a letter a few issues later where someone went through all the clues Marv put in the story, which was then plagiarised by a British letter hack when the story appeared in the British edition of Dracula Lives.
ToD was the main exception to my dislike of true horror comics. It’s also a reminder that while Wolfman didn’t do a lot of series that excited me, ToD did so more than even New Teen Titans.
That ending was a shock back then and having never reread it, I only now have learned that the writer played fair and laid out clues to attentive reader. Well done!
And if Angel’s status was on hold while possessed by Lilith, I guess it doesn’t matter how long it went on. That kid probably could be fodder for an origin story though having been magically been put on hold in utero for so long.
I had little interest in anything “horror-related” until the early 80’s, when I married my first wife, who was a horror fan herself and delighted in introducing me to all this stuff. Even then, she wasn’t a comics fan, so most of the Marvel Monster books passed me by. In other words, I’ve never seen this book before today.
As such, I was a fan of Wesley Snipe’s Blade movies when they hit the big screen and even found a few things to enjoy in the lamentable third one that starred Dominc Purcell as Dracula himself. In that movie, when we were introduced to Ryan Reynold’s character as “Hannibal King,” I thought it was just a cool hero name and had no idea it had a history in comics. In those days, we hadn’t gotten used to all the Easter eggs Marvel included in it’s movies yet (especially since we hadn’t really gotten used to the idea of “Marvel Movies” yet, either). So, it’s worth reading this book today to finally discover the origins of Hannibal King, even if the story wasn’t particularly overwhelming.
One of the very first comics stories I ever tried to sell was a “hard-boiled” detective story, and in the otherwise fairly encouraging rejection letter I got from Kitchen Sink Press, I got an impassioned primer (or perhaps it was just a rant) about “Noir” and how a “Sam Spade-type” detective should sound. I think if Marv had submitted this same story to the same publisher, he’d have gotten back the same note. King’s opening narration was cheesy as opposed to hard-boiled, and even putting the prequesite sexism aside, didn’t do the character much good. I guessed early on that King had to be a vampire–though how, out of all the PI’s in London, Adrianne Walters came to choose King in the first place was never explained–and was admittedly baffled by Dracula’s inability to deal with him effectively.
Oh, and seriously, in the Lucky Inn tavern scene, when the customer talking to Hannibal referred to Adrianne’s husband as “a spade?” Really? First we got Shang Chi referred to as a “chink” twice in Giant MoKF #1 and now, Wolfman is referring to a deceased black man as a spade? Given how open and inclusive Marvel tried to be in it’s stories (the fact that Walters is a black man at all) and Stan’s own very public attitudes about racism, I confess I’m kinda’ schocked as the casual use of racist epithets on display here.
Finally, the art was OK. I wasn’t as big a fan of Gene Colan as a lot of others were and are, but the panels were dynamic and moody and did what they were supposed to do.
I think my problem with Dracula is the same one several people mentioned with Fu Manchu a week ago. It’s hard to accept a character as such a horrifying badass when all he does is lose, over and over again. The only time Dracula ever clearly won was when we was facing another bad guy, and it’s hard to root for a character like that, especially when he’s so unlikeable to begin with. Thanks, Alan!
That the title star was definitely a bad guy, who had to regularly murder people just to survive and who felt no remorse or guilt whatsoever for his evil deeds did make Dracula difficult to root for, but that made the “supporting cast”, mainly Van Helsing and the other fearless vampire killers very important to the title as we could root for them instead, even if their success would mean the end of the series. Which is one reason why I’m glad the series actually did come to an end wherein Dracula met his demise at Van Helsing’s hand. I never got any issues of the magazine and while I did read some of those X-Men & Dr. Strange stories featuring Drac, I didn’t really care for his having been revived although it seems at some point occult vampirism was vanquished in the Marvel universe, although I don’t know if that actually stuck to the present.
“Which is one reason why I’m glad the series actually did come to an end wherein Dracula met his demise at Van Helsing’s hand.”
It was Quincy Harker’s actually. 😉
“…it seems at some point occult vampirism was vanquished in the Marvel universe, although I don’t know if that actually stuck to the present.”
It didn’t. In fact, Marvel is currently in the midst of a major crossover, “Blood Hunt”, where vamps are (again) threatening to conquer the earth. Blade has been possessed by the spirit of the ancient proto-vamp, Varnae! Spider-Man Miles Morales, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange have all been turned into fanged fiends! And so on. It’s all great summer fun, IMHO, even if I do have problems squaring Marvel’s current visualization of Dracula — wearing full body armor, clean-shaven, rocking a white ponytail — with the opera-cloaked fellow I read about in the 1970s.
Oops! Forgot it was Harker in the wheelchair! Face palm!
“Given how open and inclusive Marvel tried to be in its stories… and Stan’s own very public attitudes about racism, I confess I’m kinda’ shocked as the casual use of racist epithets on display here.”
At the risk of sounding flip or cliched, the 1970s were a different time. Take, for example, Mel Brooks’ film Blazing Saddles, which came out in the same year as these comics, 1974. The screenplay (co-written by Richard Pryor) was riddled with the n-word, but nobody took Brooks for a racist; rather, he and his collaborators were understood to be ridiculing racists. I think there was a similar thing going on at Marvel, as well as elsewhere in the popular culture; having less-than-sympathetic characters (in the GSMoKF story, it’s the guys who are actually trying to kill our hero) use racial epithets wasn’t perceived by either the writers or readers as racism, but, rather, as realism.
Fifty years later, these things hit a bit differently. Blazing Saddles may still be generally acknowledged as a classic comedy, but I think you’ll agree with me, Don, that the chances of it following The Producers and Young Frankenstein to the Broadway stage are about nil, and not just because of all the horses. Are we as a society better or worse off in 2024 for our greater sensitivity about such matters? I’m honestly not sure; but, as an old white guy, it’s probably not my place to say, either way.
I hear what you’re saying, Alan, but have to disagree. Blazing Saddles very obviously invited the audience to be “in on the joke,” to join in on ridiculing the racist. There’s none of that context here. There’s no attention drawn to this language that the speaker is meant to be laughable or held in lower esteem. This comes more into the line of a novelist writing a character as someone who has racist tendencies and would therefore speak in racist language, except for the fact that we don’t get the background here we’d normally in a novel. Mainly, it’s just that I don’t remember this kind of denigration from back in the day and I’m sort of surprised to find it here, hiding in plain sight for the last fifty years.
Don, with all respect, I think you may have missed my main point, which was that in 1974 the use of racial epithets in a work of fiction wasn’t seen in and of itself as problematic, in the way it is today. In that context, it doesn’t matter whether or not an audience for Blazing Saddles was, or is, “in on the joke”; you still couldn’t mount a musical production of that property in 2024 without massive changes to the script.
For me, Wolfman’s handling of the Walters (and in other issues, Blade) sufficiently contextualizes the “spade” remark; I have no doubt whatsoever that he means us to assume the guy in the bar is a racist. And I doubt that a novelist writing the same scene in 1974 would have given us any more background on such a throwaway character to signal that he’s the racist, not the author (though given that this is all hypothetical, I could well be wrong).
Having said that, I don’t mean to imply that Marvel’s creators of the 1970s were all squeaky-clean on this issue. We’ve previously noted the horrendous coloring of Asian characters in MoKF and elsewhere, and of course there’s the whole “yellow peril” aspect of Fu Manchu himself. More to the point of the present discussion: while I don’t really have a problem with the bad guys who are trying to kill Shang-Chi in the GSMoKF #1 story calling him a “chink” — they’re bad guys, after all — I do have a problem with the fact that Doug Moench had Black Jack Tarr — a regular supporting character, and an ostensible ally of the hero — continue to address Shang as “Chinaman” pretty much throughout the series’ run. That, to me, is more worrisome than a couple of murderous thugs using a less-polite racial slur… though I do understand how you and others might not agree.
To my thinking, right or wrong, in MoKF, Moench was writing Tarr as a “good” person who was, however, a casual racist who didn’t give much thought to the epithets he used to describe someone he didn’t hate Chi, although when Tarr was introduced by Englehart, Tarr very much hated Chi, thinking he was a murdering fiend. But even as he grew to accept and developed a friendly working relationship with Chi, he still saw him as an “other” and used terms that reinforced that, as many people of that time and much later did IRL. Finally, Moench did have Chi call Tarr out on that. Interestingly, Chi also faced more extreme racism from other Chinese who saw him as “English” or a “half-breed” due to his mother. I think Moench was being realistic to the sort of person Tarr was, an imperfect character who still had some growing up to do, even as did so many of the other main characters in the mag, including Chi himself. Maybe Moench could have handled it better, and for the most part, throughout the Silver & Bronze age, Marvel was very cautious in how it handled racism – IMO, both Lee & Thomas stumbled in how their Sons of the Serpent storylines, Lee by having them be stooges for Chinese Commies (albeit, that was a reversal on Edgar J. Hoover’s false insistence that the Civil Rights movement was a front for Commies — Hoover was a rabid racist with too much power until the day he died in 1972); Thomas by having the Sons be part of a power by play by greedy jerks, one white and one black. On the other hand, overtly racist and ethnic slurs were pretty much non-existent in the comics, with MoKF being one of the few exceptions with Tarr routinely calling Chi “Chinaman” (which no other character did), which is relatively mild, to my thinking at least. But it’s the sort of thing a person like Tarr would unconsciously use to reinforce the “otherness” of Chi, which was still obnoxious and rude and all too human and typical of reality. I think in the real world, humans have gotten better to some extent at least, but a lot of that casual and not-so-casual racism (and sexism and homophobia, religious and ethnic bigotry, etc., etc.) still persists, if much more muted in American culture. In the 1960s, both of my grandmothers had very racist attitudes, but of my two brothers, one is married to a Filipina and the other to a black woman. My maternal grandmother died while my brothers and I were still minors but my paternal grandmother only grudgingly accepted that several of her great-grandchildren were bi-racial. One of my dad’s elder brothers, my Uncle John, was very racist (and sexist) but his daughter married a black man, with whom she had her first child; and his son married a woman of Mexican heritage (but her family had been in Texas so long that they didn’t cross the border –the border crossed them in the 1800s as the part of Mexico they lived in became first the independent nation of Texas and then part of the U.S. My cousin’s bi-racial child, btw, is now an adult, a proud and out Lesbian and an officer in the U.S. Navy, sworn in by her grandfather, my Uncle John, who also happened to have retired as an officer in the USN, and who overcame his racism, sexism and homophobia enough to come to love and accept his granddaughter as she is rather than reject and shun her. So there is hope that people can change for the better.
I think the “spade” is meant to show King’s moving through a seedy milieu full of nasty people.
That and “chink” do surprise me — DC mentioned in one letter column that “Jap” in a WWII story they reprinted drew a flood of criticism so it’s not like publishers weren’t aware it could be controversial (DC mentioned this in Shazam! explaining why they weren’t going to reprint the Monster Society of Evil with its black and Japanese stereotype characters)/
Well, the guy is supposed to be a member of the London Underworld, or at least, a guy who is corrected to it.
I wonder if Wolfman had just seen something like Sapphire (1959) on TV when he wrote this?
I also wonder what led him to write a Hard Boiled Detective character. i don’t remember that being a Trope in 1974,as opposed to the next year with The Drowning Pool or Mitcham in Farewell My Lovely.
Hard-boiled PIs have been a trope since the 1930s. There were dozens of hardboiled paperback tough guys in the 1950s and 1960s, plus plenty of movies he could have seen in revival houses, at college or in syndication.
I’ve read some things about how Brooks, Pryor and the other writers wrote the thing.
Brooks was REALLY uncomfortable with the use of the word But he was very comfortable with Pryor, his humor and his artistic integrity.
Brooks is (somewhat surprisingly) a VMI alum (courtesy of WWII, as was Gore Vidal).
I think Wolfman was going for the Language a member of the London underworld would use. Today, in the word of the Internet, you could probably come up with a term actually used by London hoods that would probably not have an offensive meaning in US English AND be more accurate.
It is interesting when you use worlds in different dialects of the same language.
The Pope was pilloried for using an Italian term for gay men in informal conversation with heads of Italian Seminaries.. However. his native language is Rioplatense Spanish., A dialect heavily influenced by Italian, where the word has a less vulgar and offensive connotation. More like “gay,” an informal term but not insulting.
“I had little interest in anything “horror-related” until the early 80’s, when I married my first wife”
I thought at first you were going to say because she was a vampire!
There are some thing I’m legally not allowed to say…
I read this issue in 2008 when Marvel reprinted it in the Gene Colan Tribute Book. I definitely agree, it’s a good story. Of course, I already was well aware than Hannibal King was a vampire, so I picked up on some of those clues that Marv Wolfman sprinkled through the story. But if I had not known, would I have caught them? Probably not. Wolfman does a good job playing fair with the reader, making the clues subtle enough so that it doesn’t leap out that King is a vampire, but still being present so that on a re-read you can go “Wow, I can’t believe I missed that the first time!”
Anyway, thanks for providing all of the background information about the ongoing plotlines in Tomb of Dracula that I was previously unaware of. Definitely gave a richer understanding of what was going on in this story and in the overall series.
Only read this one a few years back, perhaps 4 or so…and I hadn’t read #44/45/53 yet – and I missed all the clues presented in this issue…so yes, came as a great last page plot-twist!
I have around 50 of the 70 ToD issues – really enjoy everything up to #37 and then they introduce Harold H Harold, I understand he’s meant to be a comic foil (making fun of nerds was gathering pace around this time?) but he’s just painful to read. Other than that, really enjoy the Colan/Palmer art and Marv does a great job with characters – no matter if they are there for a single issue, a 2 book arc (Daphne Von Wilkinson in 34/35 is a favourite) or the whole damn run!
Thanks Alan for a wonderful Sunday read, I do very much enjoy this site and it’s wonderful community of commentators
I think I knew who King was before I read this in reprint. I doubt I’d have guessed if I’d read it first. Definitely wouldn’t have been tipped off by the blow to the head — in comics “I rolled with the blow enough to stay conscious” is enough of a common skill I’d just assume it was something of that sort.
That sort of thing is also common in live action tv shows & movies, along with quickly recovering from a shoulder wound, which is much more serious in real life — maybe not necessarily life-threatening but still capable of permanently disabling the entire arm.
Yes, in movies it’s “Keep your arm in a sling and it’ll be right as rain in a couple of days!”