Dracula Lives! - Marvel Magazine

[andydecker]

Dracula Lives! #1 (Marvel Comics, 1973, Magazine, bw, 76 pages)


Cover: Boris Vallejo

In a move to dominate the then shrinking comics market and after the Comic Code became a bit more liberal Stan Lee developed new monster comics, re-cast Public Domain monsters as supervillains and antiheroes. Books like Werewolf by Moonlight or The Monster of Frankenstein were met with varying success, but Tomb of Dracula was a winner thanks to writer Marv Wolfman and artist-team of Gene Colan and Tom Palmer. Then Marvel started a line of black and white magazines, mostly to counter the competition of Warren and Skywald. Those magazines were not hindered by the Comics Code, which meant they could be more adult(ish), which basically translated into more (mild) gore and some mild pseudo-nudity. With the exception of The Savage Sword of Conan the magazines only lasted a few years at best.

Dracula Lives! lived from 1973 to 1975 and the concept was a companion magazine to the monthly colour series. Cover-art was strong - like with most Marvel magazines -, content was mixed. To avoid continuity problems with the monthly as nearly every young Marvel writer contributed a story or two - and to make the editor's job easier - there were a lot of historical Dracula stories, ditching the usual cast. Or the rest of Marvel. No Spider-Man here. Back then it was a novel idea to feature a Dracula through the ages. Some of those stories worked, some not. To fill the pages and to qualify as a magazine there were also text-pieces, mostly movie-reviews, short prose stories written by upcoming Marvel staffers and even some Atlas reprints.

This first issue had the usual great artwork by Colan and Palmer and others, a lot of movie photos from Hammer and at the time surely interesting movie articles for the American audience.

[andydecker]

Dracula Lives! #2  (Marvel Comics, 1973, Magazine, bw, 76 pages)

Cover: Jordi Penalva

Issue 2 featured Marvel's own Dracula origin story, drawn by then artist superstar Neal Adams and written by Marv Wolfman. As far as origin stories go this isn't bad, but compared to other of the many Dracula origin stories strangely pedestrian and very in tune with the usual Marvel fare. The 'normal' guy who gets accidently transformed into something other.

Here Dracula is just a more or less implied sadistic warlord, who after being seriously wounded in a battle against the Turks is made a vampire by some random old vampiress. Just out of revenge, because of the atrocities he did against her people. No supernatural pact with the devil or something, just shit happens. Bruce Banner could relate. The concept has its merits as a starting point and is developed further in later stories.

The last story puts 'Voodoo Queen' Marie Laveau and Dracula together. Written by Roy Thomas and art by Colan and Giordano it is a rather quit piece, basically Dracula is in contemporary New Orleans and donates his vampiric blood to rejuvenate the aged sorceress. The magazine version at least tried to do more grounded and earnest horror stories and less the action-orientated slug fest of the monthly.

[helrunar]

Thanks so much for these scans, Andreas. I used to own that mag ages ago--lovely to see it again.

There was such a sense of flair and style in how these things were done back then.

cheers, Steve

[andydecker]

Dracula Lives #3 (Marvel Comics, 1973, Magazine, bw, 76 pages)

Cover: Neal Adams

While the origin story of Dracula from Issue #2 is continued in this issue, the maybe more interesting story here is a Solomon Kane/Dracula story. At the time the b/w magazine Savage Sword of Conan was still in the pre-production stage, the first issue hit the stands about a year later. But Marvel already had the rights for most of Robert E. Howard's material, and (maybe) editor Roy Thomas was testing the water.

This is the first original Solomon Kane story Marvel did produce, a few months earlier there was an adaption of Kane's Skull in the Stars in an issue of the magazine Monster's Unleashed. Later Marvel tried to establish the character for a monthly series, drawn by a young Howard Chaykin, but it didn't work.

To qualify as a magazine there were always articles or short-stories. Here is a short one written by then Marvel staffer Chris Claremont, aged 23, who a few years later made the X-Men into an international success.

The content of the 13 issues of Dracula Lives! has been reprinted in at least three different print editions, but mostly in bits and parts. All original issues are available as digital comics, but they are also edited, besides the original adds stories and content are left out, some issues omitting a third of the original 68 to 76 pages.

In the future I will cover a few of Marvel's monster companion magazines of the time.

[andydecker]

Postscript:

In issue #12 which featured fine stories by Doug Moench and Sonny Trindad (Parchment of the Damned) and Gerry Conway and Tom Sutton (Sins of the Father) I found this wonderful tongue in cheek advertisement. I wonder if the young Marvel reader of the time really got the joke :-) Not to mention the subscription rates. 6 issues of Dracula Lives! plus postage overseas cost you less than two issues of Superman today.

Also a gem is the foto on the inside-cover.

[ripper]

I don't remember seeing any of these in UK newsagents at the time. However, when Marvel began publishing UK versions of their comics in 1972, it wasn't too long until they published one titled Dracula Lives. It had the Dracula, werewolf and, I think, the Frankenstein strips in each issue. I bought a few at the time, but as I only had 10p per week pocket money they were in fierce competition with so many other comics for my money. I think each issue cost 6p or 7p.