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Tomb of Dracula #28

Jan 1975
Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan

Tomb of Dracula #28 cover

Story Name:

Madness in the Mind!


Synopsis

Tomb of Dracula #28 synopsis by Peter Silvestro
Rating: 4 stars

Taj Nital in his hometown of Jajpur, India, is meeting with his wheelchair-bound wife Jyota who wants to reconcile after a family tragedy. Said tragedy is their son Adri, a vampire, tied to a bed and kept alive by donated blood. Now the villagers are afraid of him and are planning to kill him. Jyota wants Taj to save him….

Doctor Sun now has all three pieces of the Chimera; he also has Dracula, Shiela Whittier, and David Eshcol prisoners. Dracula demands to be freed from his bonds but he is slapped in the face with a cross by Sun’s agent Mae Li. To demonstrate its power, Dr. Sun manipulates Shiela to hit David, crying that she hates him. Then David sees his father alive, mocking him for believing in the religious instruction Jacob taught him. Jacob now takes away David’s Star of David necklace and tells him he is going to destroy his faith. David breaks down and Mae Li leads him away, sending him though a doorway which drops him into a pit. When he recovers, he finds he is Moses before the Burning Bush but the Voice from the bush claims to be Satan, telling him there is no God and burning him in the flames. Shiela tries to comfort David whose suffering is all in his head—but Dracula approaches Shiela, confessing that he loves her and taking her in his embrace. But then his face turns into a skull and Shiela collapses in terror. Dracula’s turn is next as he sees his foes Quincy Harker, Rachel van Helsing, Frank Drake, Blade, Taj, and his own daughter Lilith teaming up to destroy him, too quickly for him to fight back. He fights but then notices that Harker can walk and Taj speak so he knows it is all an illusion and he fights his way to Dr. Sun who teleports away and Dracula sees only Sun’s soldiers, tasked with killing him. But the soldiers realize their master has abandoned them to die and choose instead to run. Mae Li takes Shiela hostage with a knife to her throat, demanding the Chimera. Instead, Dracula hypnotizes her and commands her to kill herself with the knife, which she does. The sole remaining loyal soldier is killed by Dracula. Shiela, unnerved by everything she has endured, smashes the Chimera to bits. She knows now that Dracula is a monster and she was a fool to love him; she goes off with David. Dracula commands her to return but she just keeps walking….


 

Review / Commentaries


Tomb of Dracula #28 Review by (March 9, 2021)

Review: The series finally gets to the meat of the Taj story: his son is a vampire but just as a teaser; full details will come next issue. For now, it’s the second confrontation between Drac and Dr. Sun, even though isn’t clear whether the latter is physically present or not. He is said to teleport away yet apparently he can’t take the Chimera with him. Anyway, the bulk of the issue has Sun using the power of the Chimera to play mind games with his captives. So David, who seems to have problems with doubt, is shown visions of his father and the Burning Bush mocking his beliefs. Shiela, who loves Dracula, is ridiculed for it, having Drac appear to return her love and then turning into a vision of death. Drac gets the coolest stuff, resembling a typical fight scene from this book, with all of the heroes present once again. So after all these unreal action scenes, the real action starts and it’s over quickly with Drac having Mei Li kill herself and chomping on the leftover soldier. The real dramatic heft of the story is in Shiela's rejection of her manipulative master and departure. The real surprise is how this rebellion affects Dracula. He seems to collapse in on himself, suggesting he really had some kind of feelings for her (he would have ripped Clifton Graves’ head off for the same disobedience). True? False? We’ll see what comes next issue.

The real disappointment in the issue is that the Chimera is destroyed as it would have been an interesting McGuffin for future tales and now it’s gone forever. Oh well, there are millions of other powerful objects in the Marvel Universe, both magical and scientific, for the writers to play with. No one ever missed this one.

Comments: Part three of four parts. First appearance of Adri Nital, Taj’s son. The Biblical account of Moses and the Burning Bush is found in Exodus 3:1-22. One of the letters in the letter column is by Dean Mullaney, future founder of Eclipse Enterprises. The letters page includes a complete list of the clues in issue #25 that Hannibal King was a vampire.



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Main/1st Story Full Credits

Gene Colan
Tom Palmer
Petra Goldberg
Gil Kane (Cover Penciler)
Tom Palmer (Cover Inker)
Tom Palmer (Cover Colorist)
Additional Credits
Letterer: Ray Holloway.

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