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Tomb of Dracula #15: Review

Dec 1973
Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan

Story Name:

Fear is the Name of the Game!

Review & Comments

Rating:
4.5 stars

Tomb of Dracula #15 Review by (October 21, 2020)

Review: And again, we have a departure from the usual formula: we have Dracula writing in his diary about various incidents that have come to his mind. This is like the TV series MASH often centering on Hawkeye or one of the other characters writing a letter home as a means of presenting shorter tales that would not repay being stretched to fill an entire episode. And so here we see Dracula himself pondering various bits of his life. Even more so we are shown at length for the first time, Dracula’s thoughts and motives and, as we guessed, it is a dark and ugly vision tempered by a warped vision of honor and nobility. Dracula’s concerns for morality and glory drip with irony as they fall from the lips of this utter fiend.

Comments: Story retcons issue #1 to explain that when Dracula was revived he had only been dead about three years (specifically, since July 24, 1969, the date of the first moon landing) instead of the ca. 75 years since the end of Bram Stoker’s novel. Dracula’s origin appeared in DRACULA LIVES #2.





 

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Tomb of Dracula #15 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

In the wake of his death (issue #13-14), Dracula opens his diary to record the events of his life. On his way there after escaping Father Josiah Dawn’s tent, he was shot down by a hunter while in bat form. He revealed himself to the man and summoned a horde of rats to pursue the hunter…directly into the jaws of a pack of wolves….

Dracula recalls his beloved wife Maria and his revenge against the enemy who slew her. And he recalls another married couple, more recently. They drove out to a remote area in the woods where the husband Richard revealed his plans to murder his wife Kitty, so that he would gain her inheritance which he would lose by divorcing her. He shoots her and she plunges from a cliff to the rocks below. Dracula comes upon her and asks her if she wishes revenge. She gasps out a yes and soon Richard is at home with his mistress and he answers a knock at the door to find the vampirized Kitty ready to feast….

This leads Dracula to recall a time when he was deceived: an elderly man named Orphelus who revealed to him that he was a Roman soldier who discovered in ancient Britain a pool of the blood of all who have ever died, which conferred upon him immortality. Orphelus asks Dracula to take him back to that pool so that he may renew his immortality and he offers Dracula an endless supply of the blood he needs. Dracula agrees and flies the man to the hidden pool; Orphelus then admits he lied, having becomes sick of immortality he wishes now to destroy the pool and Dracula as well. The old man plunges his magic amulet into the pool and it explodes, hurling Dracula away but his vampiric power ensures his survival….

Recalling Blade, Dracula thinks of the previous man to kill him: at his castle in Translvania in 1969, a Scotsman seeking to learn what happened to his son who was pursuing the vampire lord. Dracula reveals that he killed the man but could not turn him into a vampire because he clutched a crucifix and now the two fight. The Scotsman pierced Dracula’s heart with a stake but the vampire lived long enough to hurl his foe into a pit (the same one he threw Clifton Graves into in issue #1) and crawl into his coffin before he died. Dracula closes his diary with wicked laughter, vowing that, no matter how often he is killed, he will always return….



Gene Colan
Vince Colletta
?
Gil Kane (Cover Penciler)
? (Cover Inker)
? (Cover Colorist)
Letterer: John Costanza.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

> Tomb of Dracula: Book info and issue index

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