Before we dive into the individual comic book that’s the main topic of today’s post, your humble blogger would like to call your attention to a more general aspect of comics history, one that’s making its debut on this site with the Gene Colan-Tom Palmer cover shown above. Yes, it’s the Uniform Product Code — which, as best as I can tell, actually first started appearing on DC Comics’ publications in February, 1976, but, as we didn’t cover any DC books last month, had to wait for March to show up here, in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of its adoption by Marvel. I don’t really have anything else to say about the UPC, except that we’d all best get used to it (again), because it’s not going away anytime soon. (Yeah, sure, around the turn of the next decade the big publishers will begin using a different graphic in its place on their direct-sales editions. But the real estate consumed by that rectangular box won’t be coming back for a long, long time.)
And now that that’s out of the way, it’s on with the show.
As regular readers will recall, the month of February, 1976 had brought Marvel Comics fans the first-ever matchup between Count Vlad Dracula, Lord of Vampires, and Doctor Stephen Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts. Beginning in Tomb of Dracula #44, the crossover had concluded in Doctor Strange #14 with what appeared to be Dracula’s utter and final demise. But rather than pick up where that episode left off, our present subject’s opening splash page finds storytellers Marv Wolfman (writer), Colan (penciller), and Palmer (inker/colorist) returning to another cliffhanger — the one with which ToD #44 itself had in fact closed, as the vampire slayer known as Blade and the vampire detective called Hannibal King faced each other for the very first time…
King’s surmise is correct, of course; but, since Blade has never actually heard the name of the white-haired vampire who killed his mother (and who also turned King into one of the undead), the two characters have to spar for a few more panels before the daylight-deprived private dick finally manages to get his point across…
Blade had found himself reluctantly allied with Dracula against the megalomaniacal brain-in-a-box Doctor Sun in Tomb of Dracula #43; although the two only fought together side-by-side for a handful of pages, that had apparently been more than enough for Blade.
Back in March, 1976, my younger self was a little disappointed by the revelation that Dracula had managed to fake out Dr. Strange while the Sorcerer Supreme was calling on the very Name of God. To me, if to no one else, that implied that Drac had manged to put one over not just on Stephen Strange, but on the Almighty Himself — a notion that didn’t sit great with my Southern Baptist sensibilities of five decades ago. Naturally, I understood that, assuming that Dracula was to continue as the star of the comic-book series that bore his name, he wasn’t going to stay dead forever — and probably not for even as long as a single issue. Still, I thought he should have to work a little harder for his inevitable resurrection, especially since Doc Strange had gotten the Lord involved.
All that said, I was probably at least somewhat mollified by the scene that immediately followed, as well as by similar ones that would follow in the months to come. Though it would take some time for the full scope of his intentions to become evident, Marv Wolfman had his very own long-range plan for taking the enmity between the Lord of Vampires and the God of the Abrahamic religions to the next level…
Dracula is forced to acknowledge that, if he wants to set up shop in this deconsecrated church, he’ll simply have to live with the painting’s presence. “Bah!” he snarls. “I’ve existed 500 years, and even to this day, my power stands helpless before… his! But that must not always be so.”
A little later, elsewhere in Boston, magazine writer Harold H. Harold is working on a new piece when Dracula — with whom Harold became acquainted during the recently concluded Doctor Sun business — comes looking for a favor…
Once he has the information he seeks — the name Anton Lupeski, along with the Satanist leader’s address — Dracula flits away…
The story from Dracula Lives #9 (Nov., 1974) that’s being referenced here is “Twice Dies the Vampire!” Written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Sonny Trinidad, this 10-pager is indeed set in Spain in 1903, and is a first person narrative in which a mysterious figure named Carlos Muerto — revealed at the story’s conclusion to be none other than Death, himself — actually manages to get Dracula killed twice, only to see him resurrected each time. (For the record, there’s no little girl shown in the story — although there’s also nothing in it to preclude one being present in one or more scenes, standing somewhere discreetly off-panel.)
It’s a pretty good yarn, but Wolfman’s callback to it in this scene is rather curious. As best as I’ve been able to determine, neither the unnamed old woman nor her cat Roxanne ever showed up in this series again, so what was the point? Perhaps the whole thing can best be understood as simply a road that was considered but, for whatever reason, not taken in the end.
Dracula’s descendant Frank Drake had struck out on his own way back in Tomb of Dracula #24, beginning a journey of self-discovery that soon led him to some harrowing adventures in Brazil, where he teamed up for a time with Brother Voodoo. He’d rejoined Quincy Harker’s band of vampire hunters in #37, brimming with a new self-confidence and sense of purpose — though, as indicated above, his sometime girlfriend Rachel van Helsing is now worried that the previously somewhat feckless Frank may have overcorrected just a tad.
Per an interview with Marv Wolfman published in The Comics Journal #44 (Jan., 1979), the writer/editor ran into problems with the Comics Code Authority regarding his “Church of Dracula” storyline, from the very beginning virtually to its end. Among the elements the Code objected to was the very name of the character Domini — which, despite Wolfman having explained that “it means ‘belonging to God'” in her first appearance (as shown above), took them a while to notice:
…about a year and a half after Domini was introduced the Code finally realized what “Domini” meant, and asked that her name be changed. We indicated at that particular point that Sorry, the character has been around for a year and a half and we’re continuing it, and they said, Okay. The fact that nobody up there knew that domini meant “belonging to God” and that it was a verbal pun right from the beginning, astounds me. It’s part of the prayers, “domini.”
We’ve now come to the last three pages of our story… and whaddya know. Just when you figure that Marv Wolfman must have forgotten all about this issue’s cover boys, i.e., Blade and Hannibal King, here they are again:
Gee, do you really suppose that both Blade and King have been holed up in this apartment for three whole nights? You’d think that at least one of the two would have shed his outerwear by now. And does Blade always sleep in his goggles?
After some further encouragement from Blade, the unfortunate “crud” shares his story, telling how he fell afoul of Deacon Frost when he tried to back out of their agreement…
And so ends the first chapter of what Marv Wolfman’s opening caption called “a brand-new epic!” The storyline we’ve seen kick off here will continue on for the rest of Tomb of Dracula‘s original run, concluding only when the series itself does, some three years hence, with issue #70. While there are the high and low points you’d expect in a 26-issue span, overall this particular arc represents the title at its apex, at least as far as your humble blogger is concerned; I’m looking forward to exploring it with you further in the months and years to come.
While it’s possible the scene with the old woman was a seed that fell on stony ground, I think it worked fine as it is — someone showing Dracula he ain’t all that by denying him the terror he’s come to think is his due. The callback to the early story rationalizes that the woman recognizes him
Mad magazine didn’t start using the UPC symbol on covers until no. 198, cover dated April 1978. I wonder why comics had a two year head start?
https://img.gocollect.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJnb2NvbGxlY3QuaW1hZ2VzLnB1YiIsImtleSI6ImVjYTBhZWRjLTlkOTItNDE4Ny04Y2MzLTQ0M2VkYjg5MjdjYy5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6W119
…and with Warren’s Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella magazines the UPC symbol shows up on covers dated October 1977 onwards. Heavy Metal magazine featured it on the second issue, cover dated May 1977, and thereafter.
It seems there was no one set date for publishers to get on board with it.
I remember this one well. Sure, Drac’s recovery from his tussle with Dr. Strange seemed more than a bit hokey. But since it can’t be “Comicdom’s #1 Fear Magazine” without the Lord of Fangs, I could look past that. Especially with everything going on in this issue. The intriguing and engaging interaction between Blade and Hannibal King. That bizarre exchange with the older woman. The haunting depiction of Christ in that painting – particularly those compelling eyes. That Dracula is basing his schemes in an abandoned church. Add into that mix the frightening Satanic ceremony with the entrancing Domini and I barely recalled either Harold H. Harold or Frank Drake’s appearances. Clearly this was a series with a fascinating storyline building, crafted by creators at the top of their game.
Naturally, I didn’t buy the next issue.
Why is that? While Alan referenced his Southern Baptist background, I let myself be the victim of Catholic guilt, somehow still in my young mind seeing this as something I shouldn’t enjoy lest I be stricken by an errant bolt of lightning from the Heavens above.
But courtesy of this excellent review, I’m going to have to devote some time to catching up on this series. (Although I did buy #50 with the Silver Surfer – figuring God would understand why I wanted to see Norrin Rad rendering by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer.)
I finally came about collecting ToD regularly a few issues later. Many fascinating tidbits within this tale. Vlad’s claim to have once wanted to transform all humans into vampires left me wondering that if that happened, how would they sate their need for blood? Would they have to resort to cattle or other non-human creatures and maybe create more vampire-beasts? Also, the historical Dracula was himself a Christian, albeit raised as a hostage by the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople during a period not too long after that city had conquered by the Turks. Drac’s very surname came from his father having been made a member of the Order of the Dragon, an organization of lordly Christians dedicated to opposing the Ottoman Empire. Of course, spending 500 years as the undead, self-proclaimed Lord of Vampire, and suffering from magical weaknesses from anything held as sacred or consecrated, is bound to change perspectives. Also, curious to think that in fiction, Vlad Dracula is a character who really is “born again” over and over again, several times within this series but also in films and other media. And before this epic is out, Drac will be transformed into a “mere” human, a tale which for me now echoes the extended Lee/Kirby epic in which the mighty Thor was deprived of his godly powers and was nearly slain by the Wrecker (I didn’t read that whole story until the early ’00s).
I found Blade’s skepticism of Hannibal King’s sincerity and truthfulness interesting. Blade clearly had the mindset that the only good vampire is a dead vampire and had to be physically forced to trust King, apparently enough to even allow himself to fall asleep in King’s presence. As to their not changing clothes for three days, that seems a norm for most costumed comic characters, even those whose garb more closely resembles what actual people would typically wear. Moore would have a bit of fun with that with Rorschach, who did regularly switch outfits but apparently never washed his costume and wasn’t too keen on personal hygiene, presumably “announcing’ his coming presence by his stench! Of course, that’s also standard for soldiers out in the field for days or weeks at a time, not having opportunity to change clothes or even having a new set of clothes handy! King and Blade might be taken in their situation as “soldiers in the field” with no change of duds available while on their particular mission. More pressing I’d think would be the need for sustenance. Apparently, there must have been some food in the house for Blade to consume, but how did King “feed” and just how long are Marvel Comics vampires supposed to be able to go without feeding? But King has already shown distinction in somehow being able to resist falling to the full curse of vampirism, keeping himself “living dead” without killing humans or prone to obeying the whims of Dracula or other senior-ranking vampires. I wonder if Marv had established a list of the specific powers and limitations of vampires and how much he could bend them for a particular character or story.
No one smells bad for wearing the same threads in comics or TV. Gilligan’s Island would have us believe he and the skipper had the most enduring (and smell-free) clothing on planet earth.
My vague memory is that King’s independence reflects that he’s the product of Deacon Frost’s bite, and Frost’s vampirism is warped by mad science. Wouldn’t bet money on it though.
I could believe that if Stephen’s er, hail Mary play hadn’t generated a response. Can’t believe God’s reaction would be “well I’ll make it look like I’m helping you kill him, ROFL, he’s alive.”
Keep in mind, monotheism and polytheism exist comfortably in comics: https://atomicjunkshop.com/whatever-gods-there-be-theology-in-the-dcu-and-mu/
A definite non-Abrahamic (therefore also non-Christian) speaking here, so make of this what you will.
The way I see it, Stephen is not a believer – certainly not in the traditional Christian, Judaic or Islamic sense, anyway. At best he would be a very herectic believer, if a believer at all.
Of course, he would be plenty _aware_ of the Abrahamic doctrine and beliefs, and we saw evidence of that when he defeated Dracula.
But that same story also showed fairly clear that he was less than fully confident that invoking the Tetragammaton (sp?) would work at all. He is certainly not an adept of any form of Abraham’s gods in the same sense that he is an adept of the Vishanti with working relationships with Raggador and other mystic entities.
Still, he _did_ ask for its favor and it clearly worked well enough to dissuade Dracula and ensure Stephen’s survival, so he was _heard_ and received a form of favorable response.
Had he hypothetically taken the time and opportunity to, say, convert to Catholicism and use something comparable to the Montesi Formula when face to face with Dracula we would have reason to expect Dracula to be gone for good at that time. (Incidentally, the Montesi Formula was originally mentioned in Dracula Lives #6, and was therefore already established at this time.)
But that was not what happened. We are not even given any clear indication that the entity at hand would ever want or accept Stephen’s worship. It is even possible that this is not the jealous god of the Christian Bible.
So there are two basic possibilities: this _is_ some form of Abraham’s god lending favor to Stephen but still allowing him to be misled. That is very believable if you assume that such a deity exists in 616. A classic case of giving a disbeliever what he needs as opposed to what he wants. Presumably by its perspective Stephen is a good enough chap, but simply has not taken the step of becoming a believer and therefore deserving higher, more potent graces.
Or, alternatively, Stephen was misled to a deeper extent, and what answered his requests is not the Abrahamic god at all, but instead some other unrevealed force that has the means and willingness to decide that conflict without giving Dracula lasting impairments. That is perhaps even more believable; without spoling stories from the 1970s and 1980s, I will say that we know from later stories that Dracula definitely has enemies that could want to harm him while at the same time deceiving Stephen. At least one is actually famous for lying often.
Roger Stern will partially address the matter much later on, during his run in Doctor Strange.
A fair point about Stephen not having the same relationship to God that he does to the Vishanti or Agamotto. But as I noted in my link, the theology of the MU isn’t quite the same as our — God does not appear to be jealous as he exists in a polytheistic universe where all faiths apparently work to some degree.
It’s not impossible someone else tricked Stephen but I think it’s unlikely — he’s Sorcerer Supreme and while not infallible his awareness for such deceptions should be extremely sharp.
Indeed.
However, the circunstances seem to be fairly unusual, all things considered (he was still a vampire at that time, after all, and fistfighting Dracula of all people while _also_ trying his hand at asking for Tetragammaton’s favor, which we are all but told outright never to have been attempted before by him).
Besides, the current alternative is to take the published stories at face value and accept instead that Dracula by himself managed to trick Stephen by using powers that Stephen was well aware of – while being chastised by what he himself describes as “flames of the Tetragrammaton”, no less.
Yeah, it was a tense time all around. Mistakes were made and all that.
The scene with the old woman looks a lot like Wolfman was setting up some kind of witch (with her cat/familiar Roxanne), maybe? He might also have intended bringing back the character Carlos Muerto as the ‘true’ death that the woman refers to? Maybe someone said “Marv, Agatha Harkness. We’ve already got a witch with a cat familiar” so it did become a road not taken (or at least not travelled twice).
Fairley sure there have been a number of scenes where Dr Strange has resisted being hypnotized (e.g. ‘luckily I freed my astral self just in time’ as one get-out), so agree totally with being ‘a little disappointed’ that Drac had such an easy get out of jail free card. Makes Doc look like a bit of a muppet, to be honest. Wouldn’t he at least have felt the need to pursue other vampiric activity as a primary mission?
Very Comics Code-approved ‘body stocking’ shading on Domini when apparently her clothes weren’t protected from the flames.
In agreement with other commenters, that short scene with the little old lady was intriguing – I’d like to think that it really was just intended as a one-off appearance…if anything, it might have showed that Dracula wasn’t quite up to full strength after his encounter with Dr Strange, as the most interesting thing, to my mind, is not so much that she defies Drac – but he lets her do it! There can’t can’t have been too many, if any, times that happened!
As for the rest: I hadn’t followed the title after about #10 (Jack Abel’s inks were doing Colan’s pencils no favours)…from this issue it seems I may have been mistaken. I look forward to further analysis of the continuing story.
When the barcodes started appearing I had no idea of their purpose. Eventually I noticed that the month was also represented by a number – it was like I had started to crack a secret code – but otherwise baffled as all the rest seemed random.
The real purpose, according to a customer when I was a bookstore salesclerk, is that no matter what numbers them seem to show, all barcodes really say 666. It’s the mark of the beast.
You’ve been warned.
I worked with somebody who fervently believed this, too.
Some people just won’t let such a minor thing as facts stand in the way of their certainties.
And here I had hoped they were scratch offs with prizes beneath.
Thinking back, I think one early theory I had was that they might have been a “collectible” scheme of some sort – which would later be revealed to us – like a kind of high tech (for the time) Marvel stamp -though I never bothered with Marvel stamps thankfully not mutilating my comics for an incomplete set.
While I did read Doctor Strange #14 and the battle between Doc and Drac, I didn’t read this one simply because I wasn’t really interested in the Marvel take on Dracula. However, I do agree with you, Alan, that I would have been upset with the ease that Dracula ran an end run around Strange and how the literal power of God-power so great it could keep him from violating consecrated ground and holding him in thrall (with a cross)-wasn’t capable of sending him to his death. It’s a huge inconsistency in this story. The power of Christ (God) is so compelling that Drac can’t even touch a painting of Jesus, but he has no trouble faking his own death? Make up your mind, Marv! See, I have no problem with Drac faking Strange out; that’s believable. But the idea that Drac could stand against the power of God and not be totally vanquished by Him is a direct contradiction to every story ever written about the old bloodsucker.
As for Drac starting a church, well, that kind of makes sense, as long as the building has been de-consecrated by the Church itself. In the Anita Blake books by Laurell K. Hamilton, there’s an actual Church of Jesus Christ, Vampire, that functions as an actual Christian Church for the undead. Not what Drac has in mind here, but the precedent exists. After centuries of being foiled by the Church, I can see Drac wanting to wield some of tha power for himself, even though his power would be purely political, while the Church’s power is both political and spiritual.
Finally, if I’d bought this book solely for the Blade/Hannibal King fight, I’d have been pissed to find that the part of the story with Blade and King took up so little of the actual book, but I suppose that’s how Wolfman and Marvel kept everyone coming back month after month. Thanks, Alan!
Of course, pretty much from the beginning, comicbook covers have often featured covers that either only represented a small part of the story within or had nothing to do with the actual story or even presented a scene that was at odds with the relevant portion within, most infamously in the early 1970s in the Avengers cover showing Mantis protecting Libra from the mighty assemblers, while within they struggled to keep Mantis from venting her rage against Libra!
I liked how Drac fooled the good doctor. It was a creative use of existing abilities. Defying Doc calling on the Christian God is easily set aside. Was Stephen Strange a practicing Christian at all? Did he worship him or give him credit for great works or influence his belief system at all? Why then should God answer his prayers when he worshiped false idols?
Marv Wolfman made references to the B&W magazines fairly regularly, but I think that in this case the reference to “Dracula Lives #9” may have been a door left open in case a certain character that will return to this book turned out to be unavailable.
That had not occurred to me previously, but now that I saw the comments about I think that the lady and her cat were indeed meant to be some form of sorceress and her familiar.
Having been introduced to both Blade and Deacon Frost largely through the first Wesley Snipes movie, the first time I saw these stories reprinted, my first reaction was, “wait a minute, that’s not right.” and that’s the reaction I still have today. I suppose the movies made a huge impression on me that the comics never did.
DC Comics started with the UPC on their covers in February 1976, a month earlier.
As I mentioned in earlier messages, I find it interesting that Marvel and DC had the UPC code on comic book covers a full year or two before Heavy Metal magazine, Warren’s titles, and Mad magazine followed suit. I would have thought that the higher price point mags would have taken precedent.
Perhaps Marvel and DC thought this would give them an edge over one another (and over Charlton, Archie, Harvey, etc.) with vendors who could scan and sell them that much faster.
It did give us the distinction between newsstand and direct sales titles a few years later (the latter having an image or blank space instead of the UPC code up until circa 1993).