The main subject of today’s post — the fiftieth issue of the first Marvel title launched as part of the horror comics boom of the early 1970s to reach that fairly impressive number — doesn’t make much of the milestone so far as the book’s cover copy is concerned. Nor, as we’ll see soon enough, is there any mention about the book’s hitting the Big Five-O on the opening splash page. Still, your humble blogger feels fairly sure that the decision of writer/editor Marv Wolfman to feature a very special, if highly unlikely, guest appearance by the Silver Surfer in Tomb of Dracula #50 indicates a sense of occasion on his part, if no one else’s. And, certainly, the book felt special to me when my then nineteen-year-old self first picked it up, back in August, 1976.
Cover to Giant-Size Spider-Man #1 (Jul., 1974). Cover by John Romita.
Cover to Tomb of Dracula #44 (May, 1976). Art by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer.
No, this wasn’t the first time that Marvel’s version of the Lord of Vampires had crossed paths with one of the publisher’s superheroes. That ship had sailed over two years prior, when Dracula had co-starred with your friendly neighborhood web-slinger in Giant-Size Spider-Man #1 — although the closest the two characters had come to an actual confrontation was when they’d literally bumped into each other while Spidey was in his civilian guise of Peter Parker. Much more recently, Drac had unambiguously thrown down with Marvel’s best-established superhero of the supernatural persuasion, Dr. Stephen Strange, in a two-part crossover that had begun in Tomb of Dracula #44 and concluded in Doctor Strange #14.
Had that six-month-old issue of ToD sold so well that someone at Marvel called for scheduling another dustup between Count Dracula and a superhero, stat? That’s certainly possible, although if goosing the title’s sales was the main objective, the Silver Surfer seems like an odd choice for the job. Not only did the Sky-Rider of the Spaceways not currently have a series of his own — he wasn’t even appearing with any real frequency as a guest-star, due at least in part to Marvel publisher Stan Lee’s longstanding policy of maintaining dibs on the character. Prior to ToD #50 (and not counting the odd cameo here and there), the Surfer’s most recent outing had been in Fantastic Four #155-157, published over a year earlier; before that, you had to go all the way back to Defenders #11, which came out in September, 1973. If you were a relative newcomer to Marvel’s comics, you might not even know who this guy on the surfboard was.
Of course, it could be that the scarcity of Silver Surfer guest-shots in this era made them even more special to longtime fans, who gobbled them up and thus noticeably boosted sales for those issues. Who knows? Still, even if that were a contributing factor here, I’m inclined to think that the main reason we see the Surfer appearing in Tomb of Dracula #50 rather than, say, Daredevil or the Hulk, is that Marv Wolfman felt that the former character fit in particularly well with the quasi-religious themes he was presently exploring in his “Church of Dracula” story arc.
I’ll have more to say about that notion further on, naturally — but, given that the last issue of ToD we looked at here was #47, we’ll need to spend some time catching up with pertinent events from the last two issues before delving into #50. We begin with #48, which, before anything else, boasts one of the finest covers — maybe the finest — that regular series artists Gene Colan and Tom Palmer ever turned out for this title. It serves to illustrate “A Song for Marianne!”, the first of the three named story-segments blurbed on the cover as a “Trilogy of Fear!” That phrase, along with the accompanying copy referring to “three tales”, indicates that the book features three separate stories, which is somewhat misleading; rather, we have one standalone 12-pager, followed by a couple of brief vignettes that advance the series’ ongoing plotlines.
The 12-pager, the aforementioned “A Song for Marianne!”, is told mainly in first person by the titular character, and is comprised almost entirely of flashbacks; as the tale proceeds, we learn how Dracula has influenced the narrator’s life (always for the worst, of course) for a hundred years, the last fifty of which she’s spent as a vampire alongside her similarly afflicted husband — a union which has just been ended by the vampire-slayer Blade, who killed hubby while he was robbing a hospital for blood. On the last page, we learn Marianne’s been telling her sad story to Dracula and his bride, Domini, as a prelude to asking the Count to put her out of her misery by staking her through the heart. And Dracula, demonstrating how much his still-new relationship with Domini has already changed him, agrees to do so: “Once, many years ago, it seems now, I would not have understood your request. But now, with my wife Domini at my side, I can understand such things as peace and rest and love.”
This character-centered piece is followed by the three-page “Lost: One Vampire!”, which finds four members of the series’ supporting cast — dedicated vampire hunters Frank Drake and Quincy Harker, and comic-relief hangers-on Harold H. Harold and Aurora Rabinowitz conferring together. Frank, who’s still smarting over his estranged girlfriend (and fellow vamp stalker) Rachel van Helsing’s calling him out over his macho posturing in the previous issue, is determined to go hunting for Dracula, and (for some inexplicable reason) wants the reliably ineffectual Harold to go with him. Harold is understandably reluctant, but his perpetual objet de désir, Aurora, is all for it, since she thinks the vampiric Count is “so dreamy“; she demands that either Harold helps Frank find Dracula, or she’ll never speak to him again…
Back inside the house, Aurora takes her leave of Quincy — who, as soon as he’s alone, begins to have severe chest pains. The eldest of Dracula’s foes manages to get to his heart medication in time to alleviate his symptoms, but it’s an ominous moment, for sure.
The third and last of this issue’s “tales” comes in at just two pages, the second of which is a full page splash. As “Doppelganger!!” opens, vampire detective Hannibal King (who provides his usual hard-boiled narration) and vampire killer Blade are following up on yet another lead on their mutual quarry, Deacon Frost — the undead bloodsucker responsible for murdering Blade’s mom and for turning King into a vamp like himself. As they advance on the building where they believe Frost may be holding up, King counsels caution — but Blade disdains this advice, choosing to kick in the front door instead. “No, you stupid moron, you’ll ruin everything!” But Blade tells him he’s already too late: “The door’s down, an’ the big white rabbit’s waitin’ inside.”
Quite the cliffhanger — though one that, not unusually for this series, would be picked up on in the next issue only as a subplot. As indicated both by the “Next” blurb at the bottom of issue #48’s last page and the Colan-Palmer cover for #49, the “A” plot of the series’ next installment would be something completely different — an encounter between Dracula and such other literary figures as Frankenstein, Robin Hood, Zorro, D’Artagnan, Tom Sawyer, and Injun Joe (the latter two of which weren’t named in either of those places, but were pictured on #49’s cover all the same) — only the first (and maybe the last) of whom could honestly be called a “shock” star. What in the world was going on here?
“…And with the Word There Shall Come Death!” revolves around a woman named Angie Turner, who lives alone in a Gothic mansion (or at least appears to), and who possesses the power to bring fictional characters to life to keep her company. Somehow, Angie unintentionally sweeps up the “real” Count Dracula in place of the figure from Bram Stoker’s famous novel, and, naturally, conflict ensues. Ultimately, of course, Dracula extricates himself from this predicament, and we learn that the whole adventure, and even the mansion itself, has taken place within a fantasy world projected from the mind of the institutionalized Angie.
Like “A Song for Marianne!”, “…And with the Word There Shall Come Death!” is essentially a standalone yarn; unlike it, however, the main action isn’t presented in the form of a narrated flashback, so several arc-forwarding scenes can be interspersed along the way without it being structurally awkward. The first of these takes place at the very beginning of the story, as Dracula consults with the leader of the Satanic cult that has formed the foundation of his own new “church”, Anton Lupeski. As Drac hands his presumed subordinate a list of names he wants him to hit up for money, it’s worth noting that this scene gives us our first look at Lupeski not wearing his ceremonial mask — and it’s not exactly what you would call an improvement:
Dracula flies home to Domini just in time to get psychically whooshed away by Angie Turner, and then it’s finally back to Blade, as he closes in battle with his vampiric double…
Our final interlude this issue picks up where we left off with Frank and Harold…
And that, at last, is pretty much everything you need to know going into our main event. So let’s pick up our copy of Tomb of Dracula #50, turn past the Colan-Palmer cover to the opening splash page, and get this party started:
Luckily for Dracula’s intended meal, the street on which she was walking is less deserted than it first appeared. Three men come to the woman’s defense, and though he hurls them away, he decides it’s not worth it to hang around to finish the job of killing them (or even to have his dinner). “Using my vast powers on cretins is wasteful!” he declares, as he turns into a bat to fly home to Domini.
The last time we saw Anton Lupeski, he was threatening the just-captured Frank and Harold. Clearly, some time has passed since that scene, so what’s happened to them? And what about their would-be rescuer, Rachel van Helsing? Oh, well, I suppose we’ll find out a bit further on…
Who are these four hooded individuals who have accompanied Lupeski to this desolate-looking spot? No previous installment of the storyline has given any indication of the cult leader answering to anyone else (except Dracula, of course), but in the earlier scene that introduced the quartet, he definitely appeared to be showing them some deference. This is an intriguing mystery that, I’m sorry to say, Marv Wolfman never will get around to resolving — at least, not so far as I’ve been able to determine.
As mentioned earlier, the last comic the Silver Surfer had appeared in prior to this one was Fantastic Four #157 (Apr., 1975); as to what Wolfman means when he alludes above to “the irony of it all”, that issue had ended with the shocking revelation that a woman whom the Surfer had been led to believe was a mind-manipulated Shalla-Bal, but who’d been subsequently outed as a mere Latverian peasant girl, had in truth been his long-lost love all along. More than a year later, this fact was still known only to the Surfer’s great tormentor — Mephisto, the Lord of Hell who’d orchestrated the whole thing — and of course to us readers.
“For now, the Silver Surfer avenges himself! And let the Power Cosmic make all humans tremble!” This scene was hardly the first time that Marvel Comics readers had seen a frustrated Surfer lash out — or at least threaten to do so — against the unjust persecution directed his way by humanity. But it’s rather an odd choice for our storytellers to make in this particular story, which, as we’ll see, makes a great deal of hay out of the character’s supposed innate, almost divine goodness — especially since it appears that, if not for the sorcerous intervention of Anton Lupeski, the former herald of Galactus would likely have done some real damage to the trigger-happy folks in his flight path.
In the manner of a king and queen, Dracula and Domini give audience to a succession of men making offerings of various sorts (e.g., money, real estate, political power). Presumably, these are some of the people on the list Drac gave Lupeski in issue #49 — but he’s frankly disgusted by all of them…
I’m very fond of the way that Gene Colan and Tom Palmer visualize the Silver Surfer in this issue, due in large part to how Palmer uses solid blacks and screentones to help this typically very shiny character fit into the more shadowy aesthetic of the Tomb of Dracula series.
Is the the first time that we’ve seen the Silver Surfer display the power of intangibility, or short-distance teleportation, or whatever it is that allows him to fly through both a wall and a painting without making a mess of either? I’m not sure, but I do know that, back in August, 1976, it concerned my younger self not a whit; rather, I relished the way our storytellers were leaning so very heavily into the idea of the Surfer as a Christ-figure — something that I’d learn many years later hadn’t been part of Jack Kirby’s original conception of the character at all, but which Stan Lee had definitely incorporated into his scripts, especially those for the short-lived late-1960s Silver Surfer solo title (and particularly those featuring Mephisto)… though I don’t believe even Lee had ever done anything quite so overtly symbolic as having the Surfer literally emerge from a painting of Jesus.
Instantly reminded of how his beloved wife Maria was brutally killed by his enemy Turac hundreds of years earlier (a callback to Dracula Lives! #2), the Lord of Vampires flies into a not entirely unjustified rage. Ignoring the Surfer’s rather feeble explanation that he was aiming for Drac and Domini simply got in his way, he backhands the Surfer across the face, sending him sprawling…
The Silver Surfer’s ruminations on why his assault on Dracula is going “so sluggishly” is a clear hint to readers that Anton Lupeski’s magical influence has put this cosmically-powered hero off his game. Like the “red sun energy” that temporarily helped level the playing field between the co-stars of Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man earlier this same year, it’s intended to preempt objections from fans that, under ordinary circumstances, the Surfer should be able to obliterate Dracula in a matter or moments.
The storm winds summoned by Dracula buffet the soaring Surfer — and though they’re not enough to topple him from his board, they do require his attention. And by the time the being formerly known as Norrin Radd touches down again on earth, the vampire has disappeared…
And now we’re back to Frank Drake and Harold H. Harold — seemingly with no time to speak of having passed since we last saw them in ToD #49, despite everything we’ve seen Anton Lupeski get up to in the interim. I definitely get the feeling that something has gone awry in the storytelling here — perhaps due to some miscommunication between Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan as the tale progressed through the normal “Marvel method” stages of plotting, drawing, and scripting — but I’m not quite sure what.
That knowing look that the Silver Surfer “shares” with the painted image of Jesus is absolutely aces, in your humble blogger’s opinion; clearly, our story’s superheroic Christ-figure and its actual representation of Christ have arrived at An Understanding.
And that’s that for this 50th issue of Tomb of Dracula — which, whether actually intended to commemorate a numerical milestone or not, was nevertheless pretty special. But the ongoing saga of the Church of Dracula would continue, of course, as would the subplot regarding Blade’s evil vampire twin.. and we will of course continue to follow both storylines here on Attack of the 50 Year old Comic Books — so please, keep watching this space.
Huh? That does appear to be a rather major disconnect between #49 and #50. Rachel Van Helsing ‘steps from the shadows towards the house before her’ and then… what? Time freezes for her (and Frank and Harold) while Anton goes off, meets the four hooded ones, teleports the Surfer to the Three Ridges, controls him and send him after Drac, then he quickly runs back to be in place confronting Frank and Harold in time for Rachel to finish stepping towards the house and enter the room. And the first thing Anton says is; “And now I leave you for a while…” Um, mate, you already left for a few hours (at least) while we all waited in place for you to get back. I guess if the writer is also the editor there’s no-one to pick up wonky plot-holes like this.
I guess if the writer is also the editor (in Chief) there’s also no-one to question the apparently preferential latitude that this writer gets, compared to the way Tony Isabella had the rug pulled out from under her over in Ghost Rider for using religious/Christian story elements (but that was already covered in your excellent post about GR #19).
I thought this issue was nice (agree about the Colan/Palmer artwork for the Surfer, as much as I liked the original Kirby version), but it did feel a bit like a re-run of the Doc/Drac crossover from only six issues ago – we have an opponent who would logically wipe Drac out with very little effort, but they decide instead to fly off and leave him alone. Even the in-story justifications felt weak: “Well, I thought he was dead and my supreme magical powers didn’t notice that he wasn’t”. “I could not hope for a better, more fitting solution… I know there is hope! He saw the future, and the future was good”. Never mind all the innocents Drac might kill in the meantime, eh Norrin?
Little nit-pick back at the end of #49: “Down them, my breathern!” Your what now, Anton? Did you mean ‘brethren’ by any chance? I guess if the writer is also the editor there’s no-one to pick up or proof-read typos or whatever…
Hi, Mike. I posted my comments before I read yours. I see we are thinking along the same lines, in that we agree that Marv Wolfman could have benefited from having a person other than himself editing Tomb of Dracula.
Speaking as a writer, self-editing is hard. I couldn’t do it without extensive beta-reading from my writing group; I doubt Wolfman had anyone similar.
Yeah, Fraser and Ben, I think we’re pretty much on the same page. What you call beta-reading used to be called in the UK (back in my freelance writing days) sub-editing – basically a second pair of eyes to sense-check what’s been written, call out any typos or query any holes in the plot without necessarily having the final authority. That does still leave the issue of Marv Wolfman allowing himself a freedom of subject matter which was apparently denied to other writers.
I see we all agree as well that Drac versus the cosmic-powered Surfer was a bit of a mismatch, despite the attempts to even the odds, and the resolution was less than satisfying.
Ben, I think you might be right as well (in your comment below) that Anton Lupeski was based on a real person/actor. Sure I’ve seen someone somewhere with that distinctive face.
Like Dr. Strange vs. Dracula, Silver Surfer vs. Dracula is a strain, even with all the rationalizations. The Surfer’s emotional reluctance to fight works better. Still doesn’t work for me though Wolfman and Colan execute it beautifully, as usual.
In hindsight, Dracula’s shift in actions here is the start of the arc that leads to his bitter conclusion in the final issue that being Lord of the Vampires is a crappy thing for Vlad Tepes to have become.
Minor continuity error, isn’t Rachel a redhead?
Slightly OT complaint, I still resent Chris Claremont fridging her in X-Men.
I never cared for Dracula’s appearances in the X-Men. Mutants and fangs never seemed to work for me. But I may be in a huge minority on that.
I didn’t have a problem with the mashup. But things like Ororo finding Dracula oooh, so sexy and, of course, Claremont’s mind control obsession made it a mess even without Rachel’s death.
About the same time as Ororo found Drac ‘Oooh, so sexy’, didn’t she also express interest in Magneto and even Doctor Doom? I was going to use her interest in arrogant guys in cloaks in my best-selling X-Men/Batman crossover (plot by me, script by Joss Whedon (before his fall from grace), art by Jim Lee), and have her go weak at the knees when Homo Superior meets the ultimate Homo Sapiens, Bruce Wayne’s alter ego. Arrogant enough for you? I had a load of stuff worked out, like having Bruce and Logan know each other at some point in their mysterious pasts, Kurt being impressed by Batman’s disappearing technique and Bruce Wayne and Emma Frost having a previous relationship. Believe me, it would have out-sold every best-selling comic you can name, but you’ll have to just imagine how good it was.
That sounds like a fun crossover, actually.
I don’t recall Ororo/Magneto being a thing but she was quite taken by Arkon the Annihilator. And yes, Doom.
Maybe not a ‘thing’, exactly, but around X-Men #150 when Storm finds Magneto asleep, she thinks: “…there is so much to respect about him.. almost to admire…”, which set my Claremont-cliché sense tingling.
Doesn’t Nightcrawler have fangs? 😉
I knew someone was going call me on that. I should have used the phrase “undead with an all-consuming craving for blood” but was trying to be brief. 😉
Personally, I would have preferred Marvel’s version of Dracula remained dead after ToD #70. I liked that conclusion, even if it was a crammed up rush job necessitated by the cancellation of the comic. Never got any issues of the magazine and don’t recall I ever even saw it at the NAS Lemoore NEX where I got my comics during the period of its run. From my perspective, the character who showed up later in the X-Men Annual might as well have been a different character who happened to have the same name.
fraser, I’m pretty sure that Rachel was consistently depicted as being a blonde. Maybe you’re thinking about Aurora Rabinowitz?
A quick search online shows you’re correct. I’m not confusing her, it’s just an error — probably helped by reading TOD primarily in the Essentials so it was all black and white (so I haven’t seen her hair in color for easily 30 years).
Having not read the issues between the Lord of Fangs throwdown against the good Doctor of Strange and this one, I did not experience the confusion with the plot holes and pacing. And no question it was the appearance of that Surfer Dude from the Stars that had me plunk down my hard-earned lawn mowing earnings. Nor did I mind one bit. I thoroughly every panel of this issue. The whole dynamic with the Christ painting and Drac’s wife – who clearly has another game going on – truly intrigued my fifteen-year-old mind. But what stood out most for me was Colan and Palmer’s absolutely stunning depiction of our favorite Surfer guy. I’d always seen him rendered in the Kirby-Buscema mode – with Rich Buckler trying to channel the former – and had zero complaints. Yet somehow, Colan and Palmer brought a significant emotional weight to Norrin Radd that was truly remarkable.
Was all that enough to finally convince me to start collecting this series? I’m ashamed to say that it wasn’t. Why I suffered through Ghost Rider, Morbius and Werewolf By Night but passed on this book still makes no sense to me. I think it was more to do with the lead guy being evil as opposed to misguided or whatever.
But what is clear is that once again, our host has provided another stellar review that gives me an excuse to ignore work at the office. For that, I lift my mocha in his honor!
I am certain that I’ve read Tomb of Dracula #50, but I’m not sure when or where. The only possibility that I can think of is that I must have read it when it was reprinted in the Silver Surfer vs. Dracula special published by Marvel in December 1993. I never owned a copy of that special, though, so the only thing that occurs to me is that one of my friends brought it in during our senior year of high school and I borrowed it during study break to read.
I do remember all these years later that I was somewhat disappointed by the story. As Alan observes, in order for the Silver Surfer to not completely outclass Dracula and obliterate the vampire in the space of just a few brief moments, he had to be severely befuddled by Anton Lupeski’s mind control, which I honestly thought was a bit of a cheat.
And the end, where Domini rather easily convinces the Surfer not to destroy Dracula, also seemed like a cop-out, and you could argue that the Surfer is responsible for the deaths of everyone that Dracula kills from this point forward. My only solution is that the Surfer’s is still pretty muddled at this point and if he was thinking more clearly than he would not have been swayed by Domini’s supposed reasoning.
Also, where did the vampiric duplicate of Blade come from, anyway? Is it ever explained how Deacon Frost created it?
If we add the various other narrative problems that Alan mentions to all this, I feel like Marv Wolfman the editor was not doing a good enough job keeping Marv Wolfman the writer completely on track. As good as Tomb of Dracula was, it could have been better with a firm but fair editor providing Wolfman with some guidance & oversight. Looking at these issues, I can certainly understand why Jim Shooter made the decision to eliminate the writer / editor position at Marvel.
On the other hand, the artwork on these issues is stunning. Great work by Gene Colan & Tom Palmer. That cover to issue #48 is, as Alan says, one of the finest ToD covers. You can actually see some of the Jack Palance influence in Colan’s depiction of Dracula on this piece.
Speak of likenesses, Anton Lupeski’s countenance is so oddly distinct, I cannot help but wonder if his appearance was also based on a real-life person.
IIRC, Deacon Frost — the science-created vampire who fanged Hannibal and killed Blade’s mother — has the ability to create vampire doppelgangers of his victims. Just as his attack on Blade’s mother gave Blade immunity to vampirism, it also made him subject to Frost’s strange cloning power.
Okay, my apologies, I am really not up on most of the Tomb of Dracula characters’ backstories. Can you tell me how Deacon Frost is a “science-created vampire” and how he’s different from “traditional” vampires like Dracula?
Had to look this up to refresh my memory (which proved wise as my memory was not accurate): Frost was a 19th century chemist who experimented with a serum based on vampire blood to attain immortality. He got it and vampire powers with it, but also the weaknesses. And one side effect, the ability to create obedient doppelgangers of his victims.
Anton Lupeski’s first name was derived from the late Anton LaVey, notorious head of the church of Satan in San Francisco. Lupeski’s appearance, however, is not consistently drawn by Colan/Palmer. In his first panel appearance in each issue he resembles character actor Reggie Nalder…
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…but in subsequent panels he looks lile a cross between Warren’s Cousin Eerie and McDonald’s Hamburgler(!).
While I get that the Surfer’s long-standing portrayal as a Christ-like figure makes him somewhat fitting as an antagonist for Dracula, his appearance here threatens to turn the Count into just another random Marvel superhero. The only extant Marvel character whom I find remotely plausible as a guest-star in Tomb of Dracula is Doctor Strange, who himself always stood somewhat outside of the connected Marvel universe, especially in his formative years under Steve Ditko, when the Doctor only ever crossed paths with Spider-Man once in an annual, but otherwise existed in his own world largely disconnected from the rest of Marvel continuity. If memory serves, maybe Dr. Strange appeared in a panel or two of the early Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four, but, again, he largely lived in his own world. Forcing the Surfer into Tomb of Dracula recalls another editorial mandate from around the same time, when Jack Kirby, as I understand it, was told to include the Hulk in the Eternals. I believe Jack pushed back by making the Hulk be a robot – I’ve never read those issues of Eternals – but, again, Kirby’s Eternals worked better as its own fictional world, but of course Marvel wants to fold every possible character into its larger fictional universe.
Kirby was told from the start that The Eternals was part of the MU, even though he objected. Hence several references to SHIELD in the early issues. I presume the Hulkbot (frequently described as a “comic book character”) was pushback — whether he’d been told to throw in the Hulk, I know not.
Kirby very much wanted The Eternals to be in its own separate reality. The entire concept of “gods and demons from mythology & religion are in fact the Eternals and Deviants who were misunderstood by primitive mankind” quickly falls apart if they exist in the same world where Thor, Hercules, Mephisto, Ghost Rider and all number of other actual gods and demons are running around everywhere.
I mean, when Roy Thomas awkwardly shoehorned the Eternals into mainstream Marvel continuity in the pages of Thor, you actually had a scene where Thena is meeting Athena and Zuras is meeting Zeus (I forget the exact characters they used, but you get the idea) and the characters are literally saying to each other what a remarkable coincidence it is that they happen to be so alike, and it just does not work.
Oh, so agreed. Also the Forgotten Hero is implied to be all the epic heroes, not just Gilgamesh.
I feel it is worth mentioning that Jack Kirby was almost certainly unhappy with Stan Lee making the Silver Surfer a Christ-like figure. Lee and Kirby were both Jewish, but I get the impression that Stan was really more of an agnostic type, whereas for Jack his Jewish faith was important to him (you can definitely see its influence in the Fourth World stories). So, it probably annoyed Kirby that the Surfer, a character he created all on his own, was then basically hijacked by Lee and made into a sort of proxy for Jesus. I imagine that if Kirby ever saw Tomb of Dracula #50, he would have been even more displeased with such a direct juxtaposition of the Surfer to the Christian messiah.
Lee’s re-imagining of the Silver Surfer was so different from the character as created by Kirby that they might as well have been different characters. Of course, characters do change over time – Batman of 1971 bore little resemblance to the version of 1961 in regard to characterization and stories. But the Surfer’s change was much quicker, within 3 years, from a character with little regard for the fate of other living things save that their energies and that of their planet could feed his master, and that little scene with the Skrulls in FF #48 indicated that the Silver Surfer had been around for millennia if not millions of years and had led Galactus to feed on multitudes of inhabited planets. Moreover, think of it — for billions of years, all life on Earth was microscopic, but then, within the last billion or so, multi-celled organisms began evolving into a greater multitude of forms that eventually resulted in us. So what if the Surfer had led Galactus to feed on a planet much like Earth was 3 billion years ago, with plenty of life but all still microscopic? That he enabled the deaths of entire planets with any form of life was horrific, yet Lee plays him up as a noble, savior-like figure who never gives a second thought to the atrocities he took part in, although perhaps like most of us with little or no thought for the suffering of the various creatures whom we eat for our own sustenance. Or like Dracula, sustaining his “unlife” by feeding on the blood and usually thereby killing his human victims or causing them to become vampiric slaves to him, just as the Surfer had been a slave to Galactus.
In Kirby’s version, that wasn’t really a problem because his Surfer was a sort of artificial intelligence created by Galactus and whose chance encounter and conversation with Alicia Masters sparked a sense of empathy and compassion within him such that he felt compelled to resist his master’s desire to feed on Earth. Symbolically, the Silver Surfer grew a heart he hadn’t had before. In Lee’s twist, the Surfer had been a humanoid all along, who had a heart but chose to save his own planet by going into Galactus’ service to find other planets for him to feed on, whether or not they were inhabited by any living things. And his girlfriend on his home planet was still very young and beautiful, and since Lee himself provided no narrative to explain that the humanoids of Zenn La were some sort of immortal gods, the implication was that the Silver Surfer had only been serving Galactus for a few years or so. Silver Surfer # 1, volume 1, was certainly beautifully drawn, but the background given of that character just didn’t gel with the details provided in the Galactus Trilogy.
My impression from the original Galactus trilogy was that this was the first time the Surfer had led him to a planet inhabited by intelligent beings which makes both master and envoy less monstrous. Generally though, you’re spot on.
Doctor Strange appears in *Fantastic Four* #27 (he seems to see his part in the 1965 Annual as a way of paying back a debt, or else it’s his way of snagging a bigger slice of wedding cake after Reed and Sue have tied the knot) and in *Journey into Mystery* #108, where Dr. Donald Blake sees to his injuries after a battle with Baron Mordo.
He’s in the first *Spider-Man Annual* in 1964, but won’t share an actual adventure with the wall-crawler until the following year.
He also gives assistance to the X-Men in *X-Men* #33.
Doctor Strange had a cameo in Avengers #60 as one of the guests at the very weird wedding of Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne. More significantly, a month later he was a full-fledged guest star in Avengers #61, which crossed over with issue #178 of his own series.
The Hank/Jan wedding guests make no sense. Dr. Strange whom they don’t know. The Black Knight whom they don’t particularly like. Spider-Man whom Jan doesn’t like at all. And like many later weddings, nobody attending the blessed day who isn’t a super-hero. The Earth’s Mightiest Heroes retcon that this was all to humor an obviously crazy Hank made more sense.
https://atomicjunkshop.com/what-is-truth-is-truth-unchanging-taste/
Nice drawing, but Drac was never remotely a match for Silver Surfer—or Dr. Strange, for that matter. Marv(el) had to find a way to “tie the arm behind the back” of the hero to make it work—and it doesn’t.
There are plenty of Marvel heroes and heroines who are in the same “weight class” as the Count, which would make for a much more suspenseful (and plausible) conflict.
My memory isn’t quite as keen as I’d like, but I’m fairly sure I got this off the racks of the NEX 50 years ago, maybe out of curiosity at such an odd match up. I had a few other issues of ToD but that was when I started collecting it regularly and got the remainder up to the end of the series. Fifty years ago, I’d read the reprint of Silver Surfer # 1 in Son of Origins of Marvel Comics; I’m not sure if the partial reprint of SS #2 had come out yet in Marvel Presents (a DDD fill-in for the Guardians of the Galaxy series), and I wouldn’t have gotten Bring on the Bad Guys, featuring the introduction of Mephisto until after Christmas in 1976, so I hadn’t quite gotten the feeling of Lee’s sans Kirby Silver Surfer writing. Having read much of it in the decades since, I can more clearly tell how Wolfman was doing a fairly good job of channeling Lee’s style in this story. I can’t recall what I made of it in 1976, but in revisiting the tale now with Alan’s review and fragments of it, I but both a bit charming and annoying, in that it’s true to Lee’s version but I no longer particularly care for that take on the Silver Surfer. Still, Colan & Palmer did make Surfy somehow fit in with Drac’s world of shadows without seeming too far out of whack. That Marvel didn’t make a big to-do about this being the 50th issue of ToD did remind me of those Silver Age Marvel titles that got to #50 without anything on the cover making a fuss about it but still featuring something a bit special in the mag itself, such as the Surfer’s fight against Galactus in FF #50, Peter Parker tossing away his Spider-Man togs in ASM #50, Thor on the verge of death in the Mighty Thor 150 (which wasn’t really his 150th issue, but still!). Anyhow, while I preferred Wolfman’s writing on most of the remainder of this title, this was still rather fun if silly in aspects. Surfy did appear to much in a mind fog even to the end when he just up and leaves, thinking he’d seen something hopeful even in a creature as wicked and murderous as Dracula.