When you look back on it, it seems inevitable. In 1976, Marvel Comics had these two leading men who, along with sharing a heavily mysterioso vibe, had a strikingly similar penchant for high-collared cloaks and neatly trimmed mustaches. Not to mention that the exploits of both gentlemen were then being illustrated by the same art team of penciller Gene Colan and inker/colorist Tom Palmer. If you were Marvel editor-in-chief Marv Wolfman, why wouldn’t you stage a crossover between Tomb of Dracula and Doctor Strange — especially since you, i.e., Marv, were also the regular writer of the former book? Sure, it might take some time to coordinate the two stars’ respective continuities; but, as it happened, in February, 1976, both Wolfman and his counterpart over at Doctor Strange, writer Steve Englehart, were simultaneously in-between multi-issue storylines. There would never be a more opportune moment for the Lord of Vampires and the Sorcerer Supreme to cross paths… and, in the end, that’s just what occurred, over the first two weeks of that month — as, naturally, we’ll be discussing here over the first two weeks of this month.
But while I’m sure we’re all eager to get to the main event, some preliminaries are in order — mostly because, although we’ve kept up with Doctor Strange pretty regularly on this blog over the last few years, it’s been at least a minute — actually, to be honest, it’s been more like nineteen months — since we last checked in on our favorite vampiric Count. So I hope no one will mind if we take a few paragraphs to bridge the narrative gap between Tomb of Dracula #25 and the subject of today’s blog post. (If, on the other hand, you already know your ToD lore backwards and forwards, then, by all means, feel free to jump on ahead, and we’ll catch up with you when we’re done here.)
Cover to Tomb of Dracula #36 (Sep., 1975). Art by Gil Kane and Tom Palmer.
To begin: as longtime blog readers with really good memories may recall, when we last left Dracula, he was back in London, England, having recently returned to that city following a series of adventures on the European continent. Not long after resuming his nefarious activities in the UK, Dracula became aware of a slow but steady draining of his vampiric powers; after a period of investigation, he discovered that the party responsible was none other than the diabolical Doctor Sun — a would-be world-conquering brain-in-a-box whom Drac thought had been utterly destroyed in an explosion back at the climax of issue #21, but who had in fact escaped that conflagration. After learning that Sun was now operating out of Boston, Massachusetts, Dracula hopped a flight to the States (and, no, he didn’t pay for his ticket); naturally, the band of fearless vampire killers led by Quincy Harker, who’d been hunting Dracula since before this series even began, soon learned of their quarry’s departure from Old Blighty, and proceeded to follow him across the Atlantic.
Cover to Tomb of Dracula #39 (Dec., 1975). Art by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer.
In Boston, both Dracula and his long-accustomed foes learned that Dr. Sun planned to use the powers he’d leeched from the Count to take over the world — a plan that seemed to consist mostly of seizing mental control over a contingent of U.S. Army troops sent into Boston to stop him, then, when more troops were sent in to overcome them, taking over those as well, and so on and so forth until he had mastery over all the armies in the world. Your humble blogger feels obliged to note that, at least upon his most recent re-reading of this saga, he found this scenario to be pretty unconvincing. Just the amount of time it would require to execute it all but ensured that, sooner or later, the Avengers, Fantastic Four, et al would show up; and even with his newly acquired mind-control mojo, Dr. Sun simply didn’t seem to be in the class of villains that could believably take on all the world’s armed forces plus the entire superheroic population of the Marvel Universe, and come out on top. For that reason (as well as others), the situation ultimately contrived by writer Wolfman to bring the storyline’s events to a climax — which involved Dracula himself getting killed by Dr. Sun’s minion Juno, after which Quincy Harker and company reluctantly decided that their Only Chance to Save the World from a Greater Evil was to resurrect their longtime nemesis — fell flat for this reader.
Cover to Tomb of Dracula #42 (Mar., 1976). Art by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer.
In the end, of course, the restored Count Dracula and his temporary allies — who, in addition to the current core group of Harker, Rachel van Helsing, and Frank Drake, also included their sometime confederate Blade, as well as a couple of new hangers-on, Harold H. Harold and Aurora Rabinowitz (more about them later) — were successful in thwarting Doctor Sun’s schemes. The conclusion to the saga, published in issue #42, saw Sun seemingly incinerated (though, in the finest comic-book villain tradition, he’d be resurrected a year or so later in Nova #16, in a story not-so-coincidentally written by Marv Wolfman). A couple of loose ends — the main one concerning Blade’s ongoing quest for the White-Haired Vampire who’d killed his mother — would continue into the mostly done-in-one #43, but that’s really about all you need to know before we proceed to take our look at #44.
Well, everything you need to know about what’s been happening within the pages of Tomb of Dracula, anyway. It’s probably worth prolonging this introduction long enough to take note of a significant development in the greater American comic-book marketplace outside ToD‘s pages that had taken place since the publication of the last issue of the series featured on this blog — namely, the near-total collapse of the early ’70s horror/monster fad that had sparked its genesis in the first place, back in 1971. At the time of Tomb of Dracula #25’s release, Marvel Comics’ iteration of the Count was appearing in two other ongoing periodicals in addition to the core title — the bimonthly black-and-white Dracula Lives and the quarterly color Giant-Size Dracula — while another B&W title, Vampire Tales, occasionally played host to strips featuring Blade and another spinoff character, Dracula’s daughter Lilith. By February, 1976, all three of those titles were defunct, as were most 
other examples of their macabre breed at Marvel. It was a situation that, on the one hand, made it harder to gainsay the confident assertion that Tomb of Dracula was “Comicdom’s Number 1 Fear Magazine” (a version of which claim had first begun appearing on the series’ covers as of issue #38) — and, on the other, made it more imperative to so promote the title, as its sales were slipping as well (though not yet so much as to require dropping it from monthly to bimonthly status). It’s entirely conceivable that one motivation for mounting a crossover with Doctor Strange in the first place was the hope that it might bring in some superhero fans — albeit a certain select breed of superhero fan. (After all, Doctor Strange was itself hardly one of Marvel’s most popular books, having only just this month gone to a monthly publication schedule; by way of comparison, Tomb of Dracula had been monthly ever since its eighth issue.)
And now, after taking just another moment or two to express admiration for Colan and Palmer’s absolutely bonkers cover — admit it, aren’t you dying for an explanation as to why Doc Strange is riding a weirdly striped horse (or is it an oddly colored zebra?) straight at Dracula against a rainbow-burst backdrop? — let’s get on with the show…
Even if one already knows that Doctor Strange is guest-starring in this issue of Tomb of Dracula, the opening splash page’s very tight focus (textually as well as visually) on the Master of Mystic Arts is mildly startling; one’s eye is likely to briefly flick back up to the banner at the top of the page, just to make sure one hasn’t gotten the two halves of the crossover mixed up.
Beginning his story with Dr. Strange, rather than with the book’s titular star (or with members of his regular supporting cast) may have been intentionally disorienting on Marv Wolfman’s part, this scene, however, is confusing to no good purpose, and probably wasn’t meant to be so. Why is it confusing? Because, as we’ve already noted, Dracula is currently operating in Boston, while everyone knows that Stephen Strange makes his home in New York’s Greenwich Village. So either Wong or Dracula isn’t where the reader would normally expect them to be.
As will eventually be made clear, it’s Wong, rather than Dracula, who’s left his customary environs. But why is Wong in Boston? Wolfman’s script never says — and that makes for some needlessly obscure storytelling. (The lapse would later be acknowledged, if only obliquely, in in the letters column of ToD #47, where an editorial response would allow that “a one-line explanation that Wong was in Boston visiting a great-aunt or a moose or something” might have been a good idea. I dunno about the moose, but, otherwise, yeah.)
Harold H. Harold and Aurora Rabinowitz had stumbled into the Doctor Sun storyline back in issue #37 — and despite neither bringing much in the way of useful skills to either the vampire hunting or disembodied-brain fighting game, had hung around through to its end. With the pair’s otherwise superfluous appearance in this issue, Wolfman seemed to be signaling that they’d be staying on as supporting characters, at least for as long as Dracula remained in Boston. Clearly, the idea was to bring some comic relief to the grim mood that generally permeated this series, which I understood and appreciated at the time, and still do; my problem, however, both then and now, is that I’ve never found either Harold or Aurora to be all that funny. Still, humor is subjective, so your mileage may vary.
One thing that I definitely do appreciate more now than I did half a century ago is that Gene Colan’s character design visually suggests Harold’s obvious real-life model without attempting to be a dead-on likeness; these days, the less Harold reminds me of that other guy, the more likely I am to find him tolerable.
The White-Haired Vampire — whose actual name, as we’ll learn some issues hence, is Deacon Frost — had first turned up in the flashback sequence in Tomb of Dracula #13 that revealed the origin of Blade; there, readers had learned that this vamp had bitten Blade’s mom while she was in labor with him, killing her (though it also had the unintended aftereffect of making Blade immune to vampire bites). We’d next seen Frost, once again in flashback, in issue #25, where he was revealed to be the bloodsucker who’d turned private investigator Hannibal King into a vampire.
His first here-and-now on-panel appearance had finally come in issue #33, where he was shown prowling the Soho district of London, seeking information about Dracula. In issues #41-42, readers learned that Frost had followed Drac to Boston… and had been tracked there in his turn by Blade. As we’ve noted before on this blog, Marv Wolfman liked to play the long game…
Dr. Strange tracks the psychic image of Dracula on to the mansion that used to be the headquarters of Doctor Sun, observing as, at the end, the vampire’s bat-shape “shimmers and reforms into… not quite a man.”
Dracula contemptuously eludes the Crimson (?) Bands of Cyttorak by turning to mist, only to have Strange retaliate by blasting the vampire’s coffin into splinters…
Naturally, this sequence calls back to the origin story that Wolfman and artist Neal Adams had provided for the Marvel version of Dracula a few years earlier, in Dracula Lives #2 (Jul., 1973).
As if Doc and Drac didn’t physically resemble each other enough already, Colan and Palmer underscore the point further yet by giving the illusory form of Dracula a bright red cloak, even as Dr. Strange himself picks up the Count’s distinctive dentition.
Unsurprisingly, the aristocratic Count Dracula is as affronted by the idea of Dr. Strange going to all this effort for “a whimpering domestic” as he is by any other indignities he’s suffered in the course of this encounter. Subsequently, as the Lord of Vampires furiously pushes back against Strange’s mystical onslaught, the Sorcerer Supreme finds himself in a quandary — if he attempts to employ “more potent magicks”, he’ll likely render Dracula useless for the purpose of restoring Wong. But, it seems, nothing short of utter destruction will halt his foe’s slow but steady advance…
Well, that sure went very south very fast, didn’t it? How in the world is Doctor Strange ever going to be able to rescue Wong, given that he himself is now, well, dead? Thankfully, just like this story’s final panel’s “To Be Continued” blurb says, we’ll be taking our look at Steve Englehart, Gene Colan, and Tom Palmer’s “The Tomb of Dr.Strange!” in “just one week“, so none of us will have to wait for long. I look forward to seeing you here next Saturday…
Wait, did I say “final panel”? Strike that — it looks like there’s one more page of this story left to go…
And with that, Marv Wolfman finally gives a tug to a plot thread he wove into his narrative tapestry way back in issue #25. Here’s hoping you’re all as eager to find out what happens next with this cliffhanger as you are the “main” one… assuming you are, I’ll see you back here not just next week, but next month, as well.
Nice drawing, lush inks, and the colors far more vibrant than in the original printing. Yes, it did get a bit confusing in those close up panels of their faces and red capes. It was beginning to feel like a prequel to “Freaky Friday” (!).
But I wasn’t buying ToD at the time.
I was reading both (even though I don’t get into horror as a rule but there was something about ToD) but I gotta admit I liked Colan’s art on Drac more than Doc. I guess I’m a situational fan of his art The only other book that I more than tolerated Colan was on Night Force.
Not much to say. I’ll just observe that the artwork by Gene Colan & Tom Palmer is very nice, and I’ll compliment both men on being able to draw two monthly comic book series at the same time. You don’t see that sort of speed too often nowadays in the biz.
Speed *and* quality
There have been and are hacks who churn out a lot of material, but the results are serviceable, but uninspired.
Alan, I am so far behind on comment on your wonderful blog, it isn’t funny. I have a few things to say about this issue later, but one thing pops out.
Where did you get the scans of this story? I long ago sold this book, so my memory may be faulty. But I could swear that, in the original book, Aurora called Harold H. Harold a “schmedndrick,” not a “nerd.” It stuck out at the time, because I had first encountered the word “schmedrick” (spoken by Horschach) only a few months earlier in an episode of WECOME BACK, KOTTER.
Why was it changed? Is “schmedrick” one of those words like “schmuck” or “putz” that has a – er, shall we say – physiological meaning aside from meaning “fool” or “idiot”? (And I should apologize if any of the Yiddish words that I am using in my Roman Catholic ignorance offend anyone.)
Anyway, I need to play catch-up with your terrific l posts some day. Sadly, today is not that day…
If my aged memory is correct, Bill, I distinctly recall Aurora calling Harold a “nerd.” I say that because it struck me at that time as not being all that funny. And I had thought that scene had been set up lighten the mood. But then I don’t remember what my wife asked me to pick up at the store earlier today.
Rick, I know that Aurora used “schmendrick” some time, because of the WELCOME BACK KOTTER thing. I thought it was this issue. But I’ve been wrong before!
It’s not Aurora using it, but at the top of the seventh re-printed page above, Harold H. Harold calls the person who wrote the ariticle he’s reading while waiting for Aurora to get off the phone a “shmendrick.”
You’re right, Don! I glided over that! I sit corrected.
I definitely remember that term from WBK. Being a dumb kid from a small timber town in SW Oregon, that term was completely alien to me. That and I only skimmed issues of TOD after this crossover. And unfortunately, I had more in common with poor Harold at that time in my life that I wanted to admit. 🙂
It’s a Yiddish expression. The opening of Laverne & Shirley also uses the Yiddish terms schlemiel and schlemazel which have very funny meanings, too.
You may recall that DC published a Welcome Back, Kotter comic book – ten issues from 1976 to 1978. My kid brother bought one, but I never did.
There was also a tabloid edition with some new material.
Definitely remember this one as a kid! And quite fondly! I didn’t follow the good Count’s book – although I knew it was well acclaimed. But between the crossover with Dr. Strange – a favorite that I most certainly read – and that vibrant cover that all but demanded you plunk down that quarter, this one came home with me. The issue served as a good introduction to the TOD book and it’s cast. Enough so that I would scan future issues on the grocery store rack right next to the posted sign reminding us that the store wasn’t a library. Like Alan, Harold H. Harold and Aurora didn’t do much for me either. The whole Woody Allen-Diane Keaton riff failed to tickle my funny bone.
If I had a criticism of this issue, it was that I really struggled to view Dracula (or any vampire) being much of a challenge to the good Doc. Like any skilled surgeon, he typically came into a situation well-prepared enough to know better than allow himself to fall prey to hypnosis. But I also accepted that if this was going to be a crossover that extended beyond three panels, then some rules would have to be fudged. And hey, why nick pick when you have two issues of stunning Colan-Palmer art?
Looking forward to next week’s review!
And it’s spelled “schmendrick,” which I managed to mangle BOTH times in my post above! I need an editor!
You may be right, Bill, but on the seventh page Alan chose for his review, Wolfman spells it “shmendrick,” without the “c.”
From what I’ve read, Harold H. Harold was based on Marv Wolfman himself, though lean and bearded Wolfman of the ’70s certainly didn’t look like the character.
Another Yiddish term is used by the character, shnook. And in another panel on the same page he uses the expression “souls of my feet.” Was it a legitimate spelling error, or was Marv Wolfman just having a bit of fun with the readers?
I missed both of these. I wasn’t yet collecting ToD regularly and at this point 50 years ago I only had three issues of ToD in my collection. I started collecting it regularly with issue 50 and kept getting it until the end of the regular series. Never got any issues of the magazine. I had already started getting Dr. Strange regularly but apparently never saw that issue on the racks.
Anyhow, this first half of the story is entertaining enough, albeit with some confusing dream-like qualities, including the mystery of what Wong was doing in Boston, especially if he really meant to go to Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, to visit his buddy, Bullwinkle J. Moose, who, if I recall correctly, was a magician! Not a very good one, but one nevertheless.
On the prior plot point of our Fearless Vampire Killers having to revive Dracula to deal with the bigger threat of Dr. Sun, that seems about par for the course in many series in which one hero or a super-team are taking on some massive baddie that the rest of the super-characters in the shared fictional universe seems oblivious to. Not always, but most often. The Galactus Trilogy was just one example. None of the current or former Avengers showed up to help the FF deal with the most dangerous space invader ever during the hours when the Big G was preparing to reduce Earth to so much lifeless dust. Understandable, really, but amusing to contemplate. Tomb of Dracula wouldn’t work so well as a horror stories if colorfully costumed cut-ups showed up too regularly, and a mix-up with Dr. Strange made for a far better match than, say, a cross-over with Daredevil, even Gene the Dean had been still drawing that mag, or, to get even more ludicrous, a cross-over with Iron Man! Another mustachioed title character once drawn by Colan!
You hit the nail on the head for another credibility stretch with comic books. Namely that despite there being several dozen superheroes around along with an assortment of super teams, none of them are anywhere in the galaxy if a truly dangerous threat emerges. Or it could just be that no one wanted to try to call the Avengers or FF about a menace named “Dr. Sun.” I mean, put yourself into their place. Would you really want to tell Reed Richards or Captain America that you needed help against a disembodied brain who calls itself “Dr. Sun”?
I was not, and had never been a TOD fan, nor had I ever, aside from an infatuation with the Brunner run on Doctor Strange, followed any horror/monster/supernatural comic on a regular basis, at least, not until Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing, much much later. My basic prejudices here in regard to Colan’s art hold true. At the top of the third page, the top of Strange’s head seems to be missing (though that could be due to the glare) and his right arm is just gone, mid-bicep. Also, aside from the fact that Drac and Strange look enough alike to be brothers, Colan seems to use Drac’s cloak as an excuse not to draw his body, something he seems to do with a number of characters, which I find annoying. Your mileage may vary. My issues with Colan’s artwork are personal and subjective and may not apply to anyone else. Also, Harold H. Harold is supposed to resemble Woody Allen? Man, I really don’t see that, but OK, if you say so.
Speaking of Harold, unless the two pages devoted to him and Aurora were setting up a future storyline, I feel they were wasted here and the pages could have been better used fleshing out the battle between Drac and Doctor Strange. All in all, while I probably would have been fascinated by the idea of a battle royale between Strange and Dracula, I find myself not disappointed at all that I missed this one. Thanks, Alan!
I love Colan (especially as finished by Palmer), but I can see where you’re coming from with your criticism of that particular panel, Don. It would be interesting to see Colan’s original pencilled art for that page, where I imagine what I like to call his “photo-impressionism” might have come off better. I think Palmer generally did a masterful job translating Colan’s intended effects, but in the end there’s only so much you can do to represent pencil shading in solid black ink (even with the help of screentone), and color adds a whole other level of complication to the mix.
I suppose the crossover partially served its purpose by getting me to buy this issue (one of the few ToDs I picked up back in the day), but it didn’t do anything to persuade me to pick up the next one.
I think, as Rick already noted, that it was something of a contrivance to say the Doc could not use ‘more potent magicks’ to subdue Drac (hey, the Doc/Drac Duo!), when we were all aware that the real reason he did not was that if he had, the story could have finished in two pages and not drag through two issues, AND quite possibly written finis to the Tomb of Dracula series as a whole. It was one of my pet peeves with the Defenders when some contrivance put Doc out of action just to prolong a plot, so I wasn’t impressed seeing it here.
I’ve made up for what I missed by getting the two Essential ToD collections, but I don’t remember Wolfman’s prose being quite so florid as it is here: “… the astral image of the mystic master glides like a graceful swan across the void of…” – what the what, now?
I think my major dissatisfaction, as already mentioned, is with the way this crossover stepped across Doc’s own ongoing storyline, so that whole fallout and consequence of the Eternity/Planet Earth is No More/Planet Earth Got Recreated story got temporarily shelved until we slogged through this digression.
A few additional historical notes of interest: Marv instituted a few changes when he became writer/editor of TOD with issue 38. He had the logo changed (the new logo was much slicker); and he changed the side picture which had looked somewhat dated to a much cooler picture of Dracula most likely drawn by Colan and Palmer. He also insisted on having Colan and Palmer draw the covers for TOD. Most of the previous covers had been drawn by Gil Kane, usually inked by Palmer. Colan was certainly an experienced cover artist, but Gil Kane and John Romita had become Marvel’s dominant cover artists during this time period. But Marv believed (correctly, I think) that this series was best represented by Colan as cover artist. Strangely enough there was an exception, just one month earlier. The January 1976 issue of TOD (43) had a cover drawn by Bernie Wrightson, a nice unexpected surprise as Bernie Wrightson was more identified with DC and during this period would be doing work for Warren (although Wrightson did provide a cover Hulk 197 in December 1975). As you noted, Alan, the addition provided by Marv to the covers of TOD was stating that it was “the Number One Fear Magazine/” I never quite understood what that meant or if it helped sales in any way.
Regarding other horror comics, Werewolf by Night had survived into 1976 but was at this point bi-monthly. I was no longer buying WBN, but I understand they were searching for new directions and by the end of the year would try a more super-hero-ish path and even team up with Iron Man(!), but that didn’t matter since by the end of 1976 WBN would be cancelled. Strangely enough, with all the cancellations of horror books in the summer of 1975, it was decided to give Son of Satan his own book in September 1975. I picked up the first issue but since Steve Gerber had left, I didn’t really care for what I saw and dropped it. Son of Satan was cancelled by the end of 1976 also. So by January 1977, Tomb of Dracula was the last horror book standing, and by the second half of 1977, TOD would go bi-monthly.
As to Aurora and Harold, I didn’t mind them in TOD 38-42, but I think Marv should have dropped them afterward. Just my opinion. Thanks Alan. Looking forward to your discussion of Dr. Strange 14
Oddly enough, the only horror comic I’d followed had been Werewolf By Night. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but for whatever reason, I stuck with it until just after Moon Knight’s debut. Being both a big Iron Man and Dave Cockrum fan, I picked up #42 because of the artwork from the latter on that cover. To say that mixing lycanthropy with Iron Man didn’t work is a polite understatement.
I bought Swamp Thing no. 22, cover dated May 1976, off the spinner rack. It had a rather disappointing Ernie Chua cover, but fine interior art by Nestor Redondo which can be seen here:
https://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2018/03/decent-comics-solomon-plague-by.html?m=1
Alex Toth frequently drew short stories for Warren’s Creepy magazine at this time. I purchased no. 79, cover dated May 1976, and his story “Kui” can be seen here:
https://pangolinbasement.blogspot.com/2014/09/toth-creepy-79-kui-april-1976.html?m=0
“Still only 25 cents!” was an ominous clarion call to a child with a limited allowance. We know that comics seemed to cost 10 cents in the U.S. forever, but that was with a shrinking page count from 64 pages in the 1930s to 32 pages in the ’60s (with 8 of those being advertisements).
Here is a breakdown of the subsequent price increases:
1961 = 12 cents
1969 = 15 cents
1971 = 25 cents (with more pages)
1972 = back to 20 cents
1974 = 25 cents
1975 = 30 cents
1977 = 35 cents
1979 = 40 cents
1980 = 50 cents
1981 = 60 cents
1985 = 65 cents
1986 = 75 cents
1988 = $1
and so on…
The late ’70s was a dizzying time of price hikes, paper shortages, and an interior story page count that had already dropped from 24 to 17 pages.
Correction: 30 cents in 1976, not ’75.
Back them I really felt short hanged when the story page count eventually went below 20 and then they removed the page numbers (added by the letterer?) altogether so as to try to hope you wouldn’t notice .
What was even more insulting was when Marvel started adding typeset page numbers to the bottom of every page — even the ones with ads! — to further obscure the issue.
This is as good a time to grouse about those lines of typescript at the bottom of the pages, plugging other comics – it made the one you were reading (and the one plugged) seem like some corny, childish thing…and here I was trying to take comics seriously (as I thought we all were back then).
I mean, imagine if you were reading your paperback copy of Cervantes’s “Don Quixote” – you get to the bottom of the page, and there, in italics, reads “Heathcliif and Cathy, gettin’ it on out on those wily, windy moors….all in Wuthering Heights – it’s outtasights!” Takes you out of what you’re already reading, and doesn’t inspire you to check out the title being promoted.
Oh well, when I realised what a sort-of passing phase the comic bug was anyway, I guess it didn’t really matter…but it irked me at the time (as did a lot of other merchandise eg showing Nick Fury and the Hulk decorating a Christmas tree…way to make them believable characters, y’know?)
Funny, I loved those little promotions at the bottom of the page (“Kung Fu vs. savage! Iron Fist vs. Batroc the Leaper!” etc..).
I just took it as more “Stan the Man” shtick (another Yiddish term!), like his soapbox on the Bullpen Bulletins, or the pseudo-newspaper jargon there like “Item!” before each comic promo.
I knew even as a pre- and early teen that “Stan Lee Presents” on the title page meant that he might interrupt the story in the most unexpected places, but it wasn’t the creative team’s fault.
To me Stan tried to come across like a Walt Disney with some Sinatra-type Rat Pack slang, but he seemed to achieve more of a harmless Rowan & Martin’s “Laugh In” aesthetic instead.
His bottom of the page blurbs were on a par with Mad magazine’s marginals (except Sergio Aragones’ gags were actually funny).
That’s not a bad assessment of Stan Lee’s style.
Or the “continued after next page” auto-text which wasn’t even accurate as often there were two pages of ads that followed.
C’mon, I know it’s not original but I’m still tickled that someone called Wolfman ended up writing Dracula. If only Colan or Palmer could have been persuaded to work under the pen-name Frank N Stein.
Marvel missed an opportunity when Bill Mumy did some writing for the company in 1987 by not having him on a classic horror title. Same with writer-editor Bob Schreck.
To me the run of ToD is superb – until they bring in bloody Harold.H.Harold – it’s just cringe inducing reading…I much preferred the original concept of showing the human toll that Dracula caused – actually focusing on the lives he destroyed (he himself being quite a boring character IMO), it’s such an interesting take on it.
My ToD run fades around the #60 mark though, my interest wained…but there are some great issues ahead of us (if Alan bought them!) #45 with Deacon Frost and even #46. #70 is another great issue, Colan goes all out for that one!
Thanks again Alan, always a pleasure!
Schmendrick is the inept wizard in the Peter Beagle’s 1968 fantasy novel “The Last Unicorn.” Whether Beagle originated the term I don’t know but I suspect that popularized it. It would be no surprise if Wolfman had read it.
Count me as a big Colan fan.
This issue … I glanced over it on the stands as I wasn’t reading either series. The absurdity of Dr. Strange not being able to kick Dracula’s butt may have hit me at the time or I may be overlaying my reaction when I read the Essentials reprint (Gene Colan is one artist who doesn’t suffer from being in black and white). I don’t buy that simply turning into mist would get Dracula through the bands, which are supposed to be the ultimate binding spell.
I may have said this in a previous post but it reminds me of the time the Ostrander/Mandrake Spectre went after the Joker — yes, it was logical an avenging angel would want the Hoodlum Harlequin but the story had to contort itself to avoid the logical outcome of the Joker being dead. It would have been better to admit there’s no way this crossover could work.
On superheroes not showing up to a crisis — I remember when the Deviants attack New York in an early issue of Eternals, the letter column went into detail explaining why none of the regular superheroes were there (Avengers were in New Orleans battling Black Talon, for instance) so you see, Eternals does take place in the MU!
There’s also a scene in the recent Al Ewing Metamorpho series where he needs help only “the Justice League is off on a mission to another galaxy and so are the Justice Society, the Teen Titans — pretty much everyone!”
At the end of the *Mutant Massacre* storyline, the New Mutants thought the X-Men dead in Dallas and donned their graduation uniforms, feeling that if they didn’t save the world. who would?
To which I thought:
“The Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Power Pack, Alpha Flight for teams, and for solo heroes, let’s start with Spider-Man, then there’s Doctor Strange, and…”
Nope, no shortage of world-saviors even with those unsung, outcast, often outlaw heroes gone. It’s like the origin of Stuporman in *Not Brand Echh,* where he takes his convoluted
universe back to the basics, only to find that while he was away, Megalopolis has changed its name to New York City. No sooner has he wondered whether there are any super-heroes in it than he’s confronted with this deathless question:
“Who says this isn’t the Marble Age of Comics?”
Archie Goodwin dealt with the absence of allies in a more serious way in *Fantastic Four* #116.
In “The Ally, the Alien and Armageddon,” the Invisible Girl goes in search of allies in the battle against the Over-Mind.
She tries Avengers Mansion first. She only finds Jarvis, who says that the Avengers are out on a mission, about which he knows very little.*
Then we have a splash page with floating heads of other Marvel Universe heroes,, all of whom have turned down Sue’s request for help, citing a crisis they can’t abandon, which a footnote says may be found in their own titles.
It’s Agatha Harkness who steers her to Dr. Doom, bringing up the question of why she didn’t offer her services. After all, she took on the Frightful Four in #94 (maybe she resented the Wizard’s cognomen, being a witch) and, if I remember correctly, is the means by which Mister Fantastic can reassure the world that Galactus’s threat in *F.F.* #123 is over
In *Avengers* #118, we see that other heroes are involved in Dormammu’s merging of the Dark Dimension and Earth, among them Dracula and Dr. Doom. (Saluting you, Stainless Steve!)
*
They were caught up in the Kree-Skrull War. As President Lincoln told Secretary of State Seward: “One war at a time, Seward,” so would the Avengers have probably said: “One allien invasion at a time, Mrs. Richards..”
In DC’s 1990s revival of Charlton’s Thunderbolt, Peter Cannon makes the same point when his buddy Taj nudges him about using his power — New York is full of people who’ll take care of it.
Yes, the climax of the Avengers/Defenders war was a great moment of shared-universeness.
Good point about Agatha, who also managed to save Reed from Annihilus in a later appearance. However both those cases involved her zapping her opponents with illusion. Given Overmind’s power levels, Doom’s probably better qualified for going mano-a-mano.
I remember in the What If that introduced May Parker as Spider-Girl, we see Peter going to the other superheroes for help but (IIRC) the Fantastic Five are away, and the X-People and the Avengers look so young he doesn’t want to endanger them. It’s effective for establishing the roster of the alternate timeline.
So I’ve been reading the Mighty God King blog’s old list of story ideas for Dr. Strange and he discusses Strange vs. Dracula: https://mightygodking.com/2009/04/14/ironically-my-tax-law-exam-is-today/