Opening the Tomb Article by aviewaskewed, 01:59 AM 05th Sep Disclaimer: The following column is entirely the opinions of the author (even at that we aren‘t sure), any similarity to the opinions of any other staff or affiliate of theendlesscrew.com is entirely coincidental and unintentional. Unless specifically noted otherwise, all creator comments have been gleaned from other sources and no creators have actually endorsed any aspect of this column. This column hates most of humanity…well, actually, that’s me, but it sounds better when I use the column as a scapegoat. So a little bit of agenda with your entertainment this week. You know, there’s two things I find challenging about doing this gig every week, number 1 is continuously coming up with topics, and number 2 is not doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but it just seems to be cropping up more and more lately. Fortunately, some reading I’ve been doing is going to help me on both fronts this week. The Historian, a new novel by first time author Elizabeth Kostova, is a supernatural thriller that paints the historical Dracula, Vlad Tepes, as an undead fiend (so basically, she makes plain what Bram Stoker only hinted at). It’s a very entertaining and well written book that if your looking for some non-comic book reading I urge you to pick up. It’s been getting a lot of mainstream attention, which is good, it deserves it. But Kostova wasn’t the first to explicitly state that Dracula and Vlad were the same, the first to pick up the ball from Stoker’s novel was actually Marvel Comics. Let’s hop in the old time machine and I’ll give you a history lesson that most of you as acquainted with the business as I am probably already know. Back in the late 60’s early 70’s a British film company called Hammer Films was making a mint using the old classic monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein (they still play the Dracula flicks with the absolutely Satanic looking Christopher Lee quite a bit, especially around Halloween), so Marvel went out and bought up the necessary licenses, and started a fairly successful horror line. Most of the titles faded out after a couple of years or so…except one…The Tomb of Dracula. Tomb of Dracula went for 75 monthly issues, had two or three spin off mags (one being a mature readers magazine after the main series ended, one of the first such magazines in modern comics). It boasted the talents of artist Gene Colan (who drew every single issue of the monthly) Tom Palmer (who inked and or assisted with pencils on all but two issues I believe) and the writing talents of Gerry Conway (he who wrote the legendary Death of Gwen Stacy in ASM), Archie Goodwin (legendary writer and editor of many titles, including Batman), Gardener Fox (creator of both the JSA, and JLA, and one of the single most imaginative writers of comic’s Golden Age), and finally, Marv Wolfman (who with issue #7 would become the permanent writer on the series). The book also had a great editing pedigree with Roy Thomas (writer of the Bram Stoker adaptation to comic form, and writer of All-Star Comics, and All-Star Squadron) presiding over it as Marvel EIC, and then later Wolfman himself during his stint as EIC. Tomb is considered to be the standard for all horror books now (which is actually not one of the finer points of it’s legacy since while it did have some moments of great atmosphere and true horror, the book was at it’s heart, an action story), and is famous for bringing in, with issue #10, the character of Blade the Vampire Slayer (although not in the form we know him now, his greatest ability in this series was that he had an immunity to vampire bites, not that he was actually half vamp himself). The story itself opens with the descendant of Dracula, Frank Drake, having totally squandered an inheritance of a million dollars (hey, this was the early 70’s, a million bucks was worth more then it is now), and is left with only Dracula’s castle. Drake considers selling it when his friend (and his current fiancée’s ex-boyfriend) Clifton Graves points out the rather obvious fact that he could make some money turning the castle into a tourist attraction. Naturally, Drake’s fiancée Jeannie demands to go along, and we get the explicit scene of Graves trying to double cross Frank, only to be rejected. The villagers refusing to help, and the three touring the castle alone. Graves takes a tumble through a rotted floorboard and just happens to come upon Dracula’s tomb, and unbelieving, pulls out the stake, loosing the vampire lord again. From here, Dracula throws Graves in a pit, chases Frank out of the castle, and makes his love interest a vampire. Pretty cliché stuff for the first issue. The next few issues are entertaining, but don’t break much ground, Rachel Van Helsing and an Indian hunter (by Indian I mean someone from India for the curious) Taj Nital are added to the cast in issue 3. But it’s when Marv Wolfman takes the book with issue #7 that things get interesting. Immediately, he introduces Quincy Harker, Dracula’s long time nemesis, the child of Jonathan and Mina Harker, Quincy and Dracula have crossed swords for the past 60 years or so, battling both in the physical, and the psychological, as Dracula took his wife, and eventually kills his daughter, while Harker slayed Dracula’s daughter Lilith 30 years before the Tomb book begins. They’re war is one of the great joys of the book, as Quincy nearly kills Dracula many times, including once piercing the vampire lords heart, but forced to remove the stake when Dracula’s fail safe plan of his henchwomen threatening to kill Rachel pays off. You feel Quincy’s palpable and impotent rage as Dracula escapes into the night, having cheated death yet again to kill, and knowing that all the victims he kills from now on will be on Quincy’s head…it’s powerful stuff, and was really different for a series of it’s time. It’s ending, though rushed and a bit squished together (Wolfman thought he had three issues left, and planned that way, but was told at the last minute he had to condense it all into one) is still very powerful, as Quincy dies in final combat with his old enemy, bringing his own damned castle down around his head. The characters are very interesting here as well, you read this series, and you actually see how they’ve grown and changed as people as it progressed along, which even now can be a real rarity to comics (just look at the way DC is determined to keep Batman acting exactly how Frank Miller wrote him 20 years ago), and Dracula’s scenery chewing and dialogue while somewhat cheesy, never fails to delight me. Collected into four volumes by Marvel’s Essentials line, treat yourself to it this Halloween, although I urge that you give it a commitment for at least the first and second trades, since the first stories, while they have some bright spots, are a bit trite and have many moments of just “why?” (the overuse of Rachel’s crossbow, he can turn to mist dummy, it’ll never work). The series really finds it’s legs and keeps rolling along at #25 and up. One of my personal best recommendations, for what that’s worth. Hey, there’s actually stuff in the news this week! New Ultimates team: Yep, didn’t get a chance to do this on the main site, so here it is, Jeph Loeb and Joe Maduriea are the new team on The Ultimates. Yeah…you know, I kind of like Loeb and all, but maybe this is just because I’ve not read anything from him recently since Hush, and frankly, all his Batman stuff I DID read…is basically the same story over and over. I liked DD: Yellow, and hopefully he brings that sort of sensibility to this book, but I guess I’m just afraid that he’s not going to be able to match the effort Millar did, which gave us such a realistic super team, and is, in my opinion, the best justification for the Ultimate line there is, as it takes full advantage of the freedom to reinvent these characters. I’ll check the work out, but I’m not exactly jazzed for it, could also be a ploy to finally turn this book into a monthly. DC names writing team on 52: Well, the usual suspects here, not that that should be taken as a slam, I like all these guys, and I’m still interested in this series, just pointing out that there’s really no surprise here in who they put on this book. Erik Larsen agrees with me: Was nice to read somebody write a column this week about how we really need the creative folks in this industry to challenge themselves, and old conceptions. Larsen is writing one of the most enjoyable columns I’ve read on the net these days about comics (and I read quite a few) and you really should treat yourself to more then just this collection of non-sequitor nonsense every week, try some non-sequitor ranting from someone who’s actually in the business. That’ll be all for this week, tune in next week for another exciting, or maybe not, episode of “guy with too much time on his hands with opinions no one cares about” er, I mean, “avie rants” Back to Rants