La Zona Muerta

If you are an old, like me, you may be familiar with this handsome gentleman; a little bit Jack Palance, a little bit Dr. Doom and a lot cool:

Remember when Amy Grant sued Marvel for using her face? Hopefully Palance never saw this book on the racks

But have you ever seen this dude in a body stocking with little, bitty bat ears?

Mommy, I had the bad dream again

So, of course, at top is my approximation of Gene “The Dean” Colan’s version of Dracula, the star of his own Marvel comic for over seven years. Hell, Toei even made an anime about this guy! Okay, not a GREAT anime, but…

The humans eat their flesh… cooked?

My second drawing with the underwear guy and the blimp is an attempt at capturing DELL Comics’ own version of Dracula, a fairly generic scientist superhero, perhaps fashioned by Bill Fraccio, and perhaps long time DELL veteran Tony Tallarico (records are unclear and I’m no Mark Evanier, who probably has the contents of every DELL publication committed to memory). Hey, at least the tornado causing zeppelins are cool!

Marvel’s Dracula under Marv Wolfman’s stewardship was a multilayered schemer, devious villain, reluctant anti-hero and as the end of the series tells us mournfully, once a man. He strikes me as a cross between the kind of traditional Hammer Films style Dracula and Marvel’s own Dr. Doom, particularly in his machinations and dealings with the supporting cast. DELL’s Dracula was a dorky scientist who drank a bat frappe and got, uh… bat powers. Or something. His comic lasted three issues, and then three additional issues, that reprinted the first three issues again.

Yeah.

DELL was not only trying to make Dracula the next superhero “sensation,” they also took a stab at a Frankenstein superhero treatment and a Werewolf one (possibly the character the furthest removed from the source material; Werewolf is a superspy in an all black bodysuit, sort of like GI Joe’s Snake Eyes before he got ninja-fied). Look, it was the sixties and people were slinging stuff at the walls, trying to strike gold. Everyone was trying to hit it rich with superheroes. Archie Comics tried various treatments of tried and true Archie characters as superheroes and even superspies (the other hot commodity in the American cultural zeitgeist). Archie even tried making venerable pulp hero The Shadow into just a generic, lame dude with a cape!

Still not as bad as that Alec Baldwin movie

DELL Dracula is an amusing curio if nothing else; his blind, socialite girlfriend sort of bankrolls his lab, his lair, his whole operation really, and even becomes somewhat of a superheroine herself. Lucky fella. The artwork is… I don’t want to bag on anyone, so we will say that it’s extremely of it’s time and workmanlike. Obviously it’s not going to compare favorably to that of Gene Colan, especially when inked by Tom Palmer, who was probably the best in the Marvel Bullpen at interpreting Colan’s pencils through inking. The stories… those I WILL bag on; they’re pretty uninspired. MAYBE there’s a glimmer of an idea here, but if there is, nothing is really done with it.

Tomb of Dracula featured dynamic storytelling, interesting side characters and was also where the character Blade first came into prominence. Eventually, Marv Wolfman was on the outs with Marvel and wrapped up Dracula’s story when the title was cancelled… writer Roger Stern came along a short few years later and took ALL of Marvel’s vampires off of the playing field, including Dracula for a while. Vampires in general wouldn’t really crop up again at Marvel until some issues of the 1989 Dr. Strange title reintroduced the concept (Amy Grant strikes again!) and it went on to be further examined in the various Ghost Rider family of books a couple of years later. Dracula himself would return in a Wolfman / Colan penned mini series for Epic (Marvel’s creator owned and sometimes mature readers imprint) in somewhere around 1991, plus a couple of flashback tales here and there and didn’t return to the Marvel Universe proper until somewhere around 2008 or 2009, in the pages of the late, lamented Captain Britain and M1 13. He remains an occasional nuisance even today, if not the force he was in the Marvel line in the seventies and early eighties. I miss that Marvel Universe where Conan was part of the past, Godzilla and the Shogun Warriors were walking around and public domain baddies like Fu Manchu and Dracula were menaces.

At any rate, I thought it’d be fun to pit these two namesakes against each other, at least in text. Marvel Dracula, for my money, is the only version of the character I really vibe with outside of the original novel. He’s much cooler than Gary Oldman wearing a powdered wig, IMO. DELL Dracula is a funny, misguided remnant of the past who never really got the chance to blossom. Stick a stake in it, I suppose.