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Essential Tomb of Dracula: v. 2
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Panini (UK) Ltd. (2004-05-03)
ISBN: 190523905X
EAN: 9781905239054
Dewy Decimal #: 741
Paperback: 592 pages
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Customer Reviews
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A great collection (apart from the Giant-Size reprints)
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-01-26
There are certainly far more good points than bad points about this book, the main downers are the Giant Size Dracula stories that, by and large, are here for completion sake and add very little to the main story flow.
At the start of this book Dracula's main protagonists, thinking he is dead, have gone their own way whilst the Prince of Darkness quietly goes about his main business. Taj is back in India and we learn more of why he came to join the vampire hunters.
Some minor supporting characters come to the fore especially Inspector Chelm and Sheila Wittier and psychic Kate Fraser who is a mutant. The early tales with the Chimera statue are especially memorable. The vampire threat enters the Houses of Parliament and over time Dracula starts to realise his power is waning.
Throughout the early tales there are hints as to who is responsible and it comes as no great surprise when Dracula is drawn to the USA.
Slowly most of the old team are drawn together, Frank joins with Brother Voodoo to fight zombies in Brazil before being re-united with Quincy and Rachel as they arrive in America to track Dracula down.
The USA stories have some great moments, the unsurprising return of Dr. Sun with comedy relief provided by Harold H. Harold and Aurora. Blade re-appears, as does Hannibal King as they learn they are both searching for the same white-haired vampire Deacon Frost. There's a cross-over tale with Doctor Strange and Dracula gets married.
The Tomb of Dracula tales by Marv Wolfman are the stand-outs and the Gene Colan and Tom Palmer team brought these tales to the forefront of the Marvel titles, they were always amongst the first ones I used to buy and it is great to re-read so many of them.
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Dracula strikes again...
Rating (4)
Date: 2007-10-19
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
...and again, and again, and again...
This is a somewhat erratic collection. Volume 1 of Tomb of Dracula was fairly focussed; Dracula had awoken and was trying to take over the world, and Quincey Harker's band of vampire hunters had to stop him. Volume 2, by contrast, is all over the place. For long stretches of this collection, the vampire hunters either think Dracula is dead, or have no idea whatsoever where to find him, while Dracula himself often seems uncertain of what exactly he's trying to do; he keeps forming evil schemes, pursuing them for a few issues, and then forgetting all about them. What unity there is is provided by a central storyline in which Dracula finds his powers waning, and must seek out the cause, which turns out to be an enemy so dangerous that he and his hunters are compelled to join forces against it; this is a decent idea, but the execution is somewhat confused, and the actual plotline borders on incoherence. On the plus side, Gene Colan's art remains great, and Marv Wolfman's dialogue and narration is a little less horribly overwritten than in volume 1.
Any pretense that Tomb of Dracula is really about Frank Drake, Quincey Harker, and friends has clearly been abandoned here. These are stories about Dracula. To their credit, he continues to emerge from them as a gratifyingly complex figure, remaining entirely monstrous while continuing to possess some redeeming features: courage, fortitude, a twisted sense of honour, a grudging respect for his enemies, and above all a sense of *style* that sets him apart from the more vulgar evils he is occasionally called upon to dispatch. The soliloquy in which he meditates on all his past enemies is one of my favourite parts of the volume, and really casts the struggle against Dracula into a new light: Dracula, like death, is never truly defeated, but he has to be continually fought against anyway, just in order to allow life to go on. Dracula's rather confused attempts to take stock of his existence, to understand just what he is and what he is trying to do, are so fascinating as to make me forgive a great deal: even the hopelessly distracting and out-of-place 'funny' dialogue of the new and desperately unnecessary comic relief character Harold H. Harold, or the woeful parody of hard-boiled dialogue that fills the air whenever the risible Hannibal King, Vampire Detective, steps onstage.
This collection also includes a few issues of 'Giant-Sized Chillers', stories starring Dracula but taking place outside of the main flow of the plot. Most are drawn by Don Heck, whose clear, hard lines are not nearly as well suited to the series as Gene Colan's mists and shadows, and whose trademark drawings of women - with their wasp waists and giant, conical breasts - are serious liabilities in a series that features as many distressed damsels as Tomb of Dracula. Claremont's writing is fine, although he clearly has a slightly different take on Dracula to Wolfman, which can make these stories a little jarring. None the less, they are enjoyable changes of pace, especially as each one tells a complete story: a welcome shift from the endless multi-issue narrative arcs of the main series. I particularly enjoyed the one in which Dracula confronts the daughter of one of his oldest enemies...
Overall, this is still a very good collection, and definitely worth buying if you enjoyed Volume 1, but it does meander about a lot. I'm hoping that things will tighten up in Volume 3 as the series moves towards its grand finale.
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Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan's "The Tomb of Dracula" begins
Rating  (5)
Date: 2005-10-14
14 out of 15 customers found this reveiw helpful
The horror comic book died a horrible death when E.C.'s celebrated lineup of "Tales from the Crypt, "The Vault of Horror," and "The Haunt of Fear" fell victim to the creation of the Comics Code of America, a censoring board created in 1955 in response to Dr. Fredric Wertham's book "Seduction of the Innocent" and the resulting public outcry against horror and crime comics. A decade later a few publishers but out black & white magazines with color covers, such as Warren's "Creepy," "Eerie," and "Vampirella," to evade the Comics Code. If anything, they were more violent than the precode comic books. DC Comics continued the anthology tradition with "House of Secrets" and "Tales of the Unexpected," and eventually released "Swamp-Thing." When Marvel introduced "The Tomb of Dracula" in the early 1970s it was a rather modest entry into the horror market. But because of the success of this comic book it would be followed up with "Werewolf by Night" and "The Frankenstein Monster." But it was "Tomb of Dracula" that would end up proclaiming on its cover that it was "Comicdom's Number 1 Fear Magazine" (starting with issue #43). The first issue of "Tomb of Dracula" was scripted by Gerry Conway, who gave way to Archie Goodwin on the third issue, who was then replaced by Gardner F. Fox on the fifth. It was not until Marv Wolfman took over the writing reigns with issue #7 and continued for the rest of the comic's run that the title really took off. But "Tomb of Dracula" had the advantage of having the perfect artist from the start with Gene Colan. The penciler inked the first issue but for the third issue Tom Palmer did the chore, and he would ink the vast majority of issues, although there were gaps. Palmer's best work was over Neal Adams' pencils, but he gave Colan an edge he had never enjoyed before. Nobody could draw Dracula's transformations any better than Colan, master of the swirling lines that showed the vampire morphing into a giant bat. He was also very good at figures in shadows, as well as drawing rain, and when it came to drawing women only John Romita, Sr. came close (note, the cover of this collection, taken from issue #1, is by John Buscema). "Tomb of Dracula" began with a standard love triangle. Frank Drake, an American descendant of the infamous Count Dracula, who has inherited Castle Dracula. He shows up in Transylvania to check out the property, along with his girl friend Jeannie, and his supposed friend Clifton Graves, Jeannie's ex-boyfriend and a guy out to make a buck. Cliff sees Castle Dracula as a tourist trap that he expects to end up with, along with Jeannie. But Cliff is so stupid that when he finds Dracula's skeleton with a stake sticking out of it (a major find) he pulls out the stake. The next thing we know Cliff is doing the Renfield act as Dracula's slave and Jeannie has been turned into a vampire. By the end of issue #2 Frank has to stake her and the comic is looking for a new direction. Goodwin adds a major element by having Drake hook up with Rachel Van Helsing, the great-granddaughter of the professor in Bram Stoker's novel, and Taj, her mute servant from India, which establishes the idea of a group of fearless vampire slayers. Wolfman adds the final member of the core group in issue #7, Quincy Harker, the son of Jonathan and Mina Harker, now an old man in a wheelchair (because of an encounter with the Count), who brings a scientific approach to vampire slaying. Thus, "Tomb of Dracula" becomes a quest, with this core group and their associates tracking down the King of the Vampires. Among those associates is Blade (#10), who actually manages to stake Dracula (#13). Of course, one of the great things about having a vampire as the villain is that just because you kill him does not mean the ball game is over, and the story of how Dracula ends up undead (i.e., alive) by the end of the next issue (#14), is one of Wolfman's better tales. What made Wolfman so good was that he took the long view with these characters and this comic book. During those same issues where Dracula gets killed, we start getting brief scenes involving
Chinese minions acting out the orders of the mysterious Doctor Sun. You will not find out about who Doctor Sun is and what he wants by the end of this volume, which means you will have to just keep on reading. Wolfman and Colan also throw in some stories in which Dracula is reduced to a supporting character (e.g., #16, #23), and there is a crossover adventure with "Werewolf by Night." But one of the strengths of "Tomb of Dracula" was that it was out of the mainstream Marvel Universe. There would be another crossover with Dr. Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, and a visit by the Silver Surfer, but these limited examples mesh nicely with the supernatural aspect of the series. This collection ends on a high note with "Night of the Blood Stalker" (#25), in which we are introduced to Hannibal King, Private Investigator. Too bad there is the letter page where they explained all the clues in this one, but once you know the "secret" you can figure them out for yourself. By the time you finish this volume you will be more than one-third of the way through the comic's 70-issue run and you will be hooked. Volume 1 of the "Essential Tomb of Dracula" contains issues #1-25 of "The Tomb of Dracula," along with a crossover story in "Werewolf By Night" #15 and the "Giant-Size Chillers" #1 story that introduced Lilith, Dracula's daughter. Volume 2 has issues #26-49 of "Tomb of Dracula," a crossover with "Dr. Strange" #14, and a quartet of less than stellar stories from "Giant-Size Dracula" #2-5. Volume 3 has "Tomb of Dracula" #50-70 and stories from "Tomb of Dracula Magazine" #1-4. I understand there is going to be a Volume 4, which hopefully would continue to reprint some of the stories from Marvel's black & white "Dracula Lives" magazine. Obviously you need to get all three volumes of the "Essential: Tomb of Dracula" so that you can appreciate how Wolfman, Colan, and Palmer crafted the best "fear" comic book since the days of E.C.
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