Blogging Marvel Comics’ Dracula, Lord of the Undead

Marvel Comics quickly responded to the news that the creative team behind the legendary Tomb of Dracula series had moved over to Dark Horse to relaunch the property as Curse of Dracula. Marvel put together their own creative team to try to give fans of the original series what they wanted. Glenn Greenberg wrote the script for the three-part Dracula, Lord of the Undead limited series and Pat Olliffe provided artwork that recalled Gene Colan’s work. Colan’s original inker, Tom Palmer was back on board as well and his contributions cannot be underestimated (and were very much lacking in the Dark Horse series). The story opens in contemporary Transylvania where Dracula still terrorizes the locals. The scene quickly shifts to London where we meet Dr. Charles Seward, great grandson of Dr. John Seward who fought alongside Abraham Van Helsing to combat Dracula in the late 19th Century. Young Seward is a research scientist whose marriage is falling apart due to his obsessive devotion to his research. Seward’s mysterious and sinister employer has hired him to develop a cure for vampirism. To this end, his employer has recently ransacked Castle Dracula and successfully captured a vampire to serve as a guinea pig. Seward’s serum makes blood indigestible for vampires dooming them to starvation, but it also unleashes a highly contagious blood disease that threatens to wipe out the human race. TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE VISIT THE BLACK GATE ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1.

Excavating The Lost Novels of Bram Stoker

Last year Skyhorse Publishing commemorated the centennial of Bram Stoker’s death by collecting his three lesser known horror novels in one massive volume edited by Stephen Jones and published under the title, The Lost Novels of Bram Stoker. The title is a bit of a misnomer since none of these books can really claim to have been lost. Although having recently read all three in sequence, one may be able to make a convincing argument that at least a couple of them deserve to be buried. The Jewel of the Seven Stars (1903) opens the collection and is far and away the best of the three titles. Often referred to as Stoker’s Mummy novel, it concerns reincarnation, possession, obsession, and even a Biblical damning of those who dare too much. This well-written novel recalls Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing style far more than Stoker’s early triumph with Dracula, but that is hardly a fault. The style is more modern and the pacing and characterization are excellent until the stilted finale which falls surprisingly flat. This opinion appeared to have been universal for Stoker’s publisher later deleted a lengthy chapter with background information (which was published separately as a short story) and had the author rewrite the ending. Regrettably, this only made matters worse for the revised chapter is an unconvincing happy ending that convinces no one. Stoker seemed to be building toward a sense of doom with the Divine Hand of Justice smiting the participants in this sacrilegious rite with the same sense of inevitability as befell Lot’s wife and the wayward citizens of Sodom in the Old Testament. Yet somehow he seemed unable to carry it off convincingly. Rather strange coming from the author who created the defining vampire story with its juxtaposition of Old World religion and superstition outstripping the Modern World’s rationalism and science. TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE VISIT THE BLACK GATE ON FRIDAY.

Blogging Epic Comics’ Tomb of Dracula Limited Series, Part One

Marvel Comics’ mature readers imprint, Epic Comics published a "Tomb of Dracula" limited series in 1991 entitled, “Day of Blood, Night of Redemption.” Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan reunited from the original series and teamed with Al Williamson to produce this visually stunning and highly ambitious four-part epic. The script faltered a bit by the end as it really needed at least two more issues to realize its full potential, but this was an excellent effort and a welcome return to form that is deserving of more attention for its high standard of quality throughout. The story gets underway with the introduction of two attractive young college students, Becky and Lila who are having an affair. Becky is obsessed with the occult and unintentionally burns herself to death during a Satanic ritual one night after a rendezvous with Lila. From there the scene shifts to a beautiful young attorney, Marlene McKenna who is suffering from night terrors and under the care of Dr. Gregor Smirnoff. Marlene’s night terrors stem from the fact that she is married to Frank Drake and she has become obsessed with Frank’s ex-lover, the now deceased Rachel Van Helsing. Marlene has sought out her husband’s psychiatrist to treat her for her recurring nightmares of Dracula and belief that she is being possessed by the spirit of Rachel Van Helsing. TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE VISIT THE BLACK GATE ON FRIDAY.

The Other Dracula the Undead

Continued health-related issues again delayed the planned entry on Guy Boothby’s Pharos the Egyptian. I hope readers will enjoy my revisiting (and rewriting of)the second entry in this blog from January 2010 as it predates the greater exposure my work has received since my former association with The Cimmerian or my current work for The Black Gate. I hope to be back up to full speed and health next week. Thank you for your patience.

I belong firmly to the camp of Bram Stoker fan that approached Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt’s Dracula the Un-Dead with great anticipation and left disappointed. Well, actually appalled might be a more apt description of the reading experience. Had I not had my jaws wired shut at the time I read the book, I would have described myself as speechless. Severn House, a small press that has been kicking around for at least forty years when they took over Tom Stacey’s imprint, decided to capitalize on the attendant hoopla of a Stoker descendant co-writing a sequel to reprint an earlier literary sequel with very nearly the same title.

Freda Warrington’s Dracula the Undead was originally published to mark the centennial of Stoker’s classic original in 1997. I was aware of the book prior to its reprinting, but avoided it like the plague at the time believing incorrectly it was comparable to Elaine Bergstrom aka Marie Kiraly romanticized and anemic sequels, Mina and Blood to Blood. There is an element of romance found in Warrington’s book that does not ring true for the Stoker purist, but Ms. Warrington is a gifted British fantasy and horror author who accomplished something few writers can claim – she authored a sequel to a literary classic that doesn’t pale in comparison.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula Reconsidered

Circumstances of health and chance caused me to delay the planned entry on Guy Boothby's Pharos the Egyptian until next week. I choose instead to revisit the very first entry in this blog back in January 2010 in the hopes that I can offer something fresh to a work that continues to fascinate me and direct my ambitions.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) has gradually won acceptance in literary circles over the past few decades as a legitimate work of literature after years of being dismissed as an influential work in a genre unworthy of serious consideration. Horror, much like mystery and fantasy, has always been dismissed as lowbrow entertainment. If mass acceptance is any measure of success, the book’s place has long since been secured. It is the only one of Stoker’s titles that has never fallen out of print at any point in the past 115 years. Public domain copies abound alongside dozens of editions from popular presses.

Most readers who happen upon this article are likely familiar with the book. Enthusiasts can be divided into two camps, although this division is rarely spoken of in polite company. The deciding factor that divides the two elitist camps is based solely on the matter of whether or not one chooses to accept “Dracula’s Guest,” the posthumously published excised chapter of an earlier draft of the novel, as an integral part of the story.

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Dracula: Five Not-So-Easy Pieces

In November and December 2009, my jaw was wired shut for eight weeks. During that time I read voraciously being able to accomplish little else. Among the many books I devoured were five Dracula-related titles.

DRACULA THE UN-DEAD (2009/Dutton) by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt achieves what it set out to do: bring income from Dracula back to the Stoker family and re-establish Dracula as the literary "property" of Stoker's heirs by creating a new franchise from the public domain characters.

I wanted to love this book. I wanted to view it as the authorized sequel to DRACULA, the true heir to Bram Stoker's literary classic. The trouble is one cannot make that claim when the sequel tries so hard to undo everything in the original.

Rather than pay homage to Bram Stoker's work, the authors spend nearly 400 pages proving to us that everything Stoker wrote was wrong. Prince Dracula (Stoker was even wrong about his title, it seems he wasn't a Count) was a "good" vampire working for God (a bizarre interpretation of the historical Vlad Dracula’s papal honor – later rescinded - of Defender of the Faith) and the real villain of DRACULA was the historical Countess Elizabeth Bathory who, it turns out, was a vampire and was also Jack the Ripper.

That's pretty much the plot of this overwrought sequel. If those ideas excite you, you'll enjoy the book. If you're a Stoker purist, you'll be left in a state of shock.

Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt fill their book with bad ideas borrowed from the very sequels they decry as having tarnished Bram Stoker's reputation for decades. It’s all here jumbled together in one bloated unstructured mess: Mina and Dracula's torrid affair, Dracula's connection to Jack the Ripper, Dracula as the tragic hero rather than the Prince of Darkness Stoker intended, etc.

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Supernatural Reality: Stoker’s Dracula Hidden in Plain Sight

Most literary criticism of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is limited to treating the work as one of the more blatant examples of Victorian sexual repression. A few more adventurous critics are eager to play Freudian detective and speculate what the book reveals about the author’s possible sexual feelings for Sir Henry Irving or his alleged serial infidelity with East End prostitutes.

Rare is the literary critic who looks at the recurring theme throughout the book of the difficulty modern man faces in accepting the supernatural as reality.

From its first page to its last, this is what Stoker is most interested in shaping his story around. The book has become so ingrained in our culture that millions who have never read it have absorbed the gist of the plot from the past century of adaptations, rip-off’s, and parodies in film, television, theater, and books.

This is part of the reason why the concept is missed, but the greater reason is the one Stoker illustrates time and again in his book – we deliberately ignore what we can’t comfortably explain.

Stoker’s Dracula is a very modern novel. The author delights in presenting the latest gadgetry, scientific theory, and medical advancement (several of them were only in their pioneering stage at the time of publication) in sharp contrast with the Old World’s superstition which threatens to overwhelm the modern world’s fragile constructs at every turn of the page.

The story is initially told through the eyes of Jonathan Harker, a fine upstanding Anglican solicitor with a solid career path and a fiancée waiting to marry him once he returns home from his visit to Transylvania to conclude a real estate transaction with an Old World nobleman.

Harker’s journey is one he initially delights in as a superior modern Englishman. He has an eye for detail and loves the simple life of the European peasants who appear to have been forgotten by time. He only becomes at ill at ease when their Catholic iconography and belief in Satan as a tangible force of evil upsets his worldview.

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DRACULA:From Script to Screen

Dracula by Bram Stoker frequently vies with The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett as my favorite book. Both stories are archetypes of their genres and despite endless imitations, almost every attempt to emulate the originals falls wide of the margin. The current vogue for Twilight and its many imitations may be the worst misinterpretation of Stoker’s classic yet, despite its enviable success among pre-pubescent girls (and their emotional equals). The ignorance of most Twilight fans as to how their heroine earned her first name led me to revisit the seminal Universal Horror, Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi in an iconic performance that did much to secure Stoker’s novel its hard-won place of acceptance as a literary classic.
The resulting film owed much to the stage plays which took the West End and Broadway by storm during the Roaring Twenties. Film historian David Skal has gifted the world with several excellent books and DVD bonus features and commentaries chronicling this once untapped goldmine’s transition from page to stage to screen. Film buff Philip J. Riley has done one better (actually twice better) by sharing with film lovers not one, but two volumes collecting the various story treatments and screenplay drafts that were languishing in Universal’s files for decades.

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