Sheila Takes a Bow
In Issue 23 (and its lead-in, Giant -Size Chillers Featuring the Curse of Dracula 1 (June 1974), Wolfman begins his periodic exploration of the inner lives of Dracula’s (eventual) victims. The timing makes sense; after an intense exploration of the Dracula/Van Helsing dynamic in issues 19 and 20, the series turns its focus away from the vampire hunters and more towards the Count himself. Whenever we linger too long with Dracula, listening to his reminiscences and catching him in a reflective mood, there is the risk that excessive identification with the vampire will not only render him heroic, but also make him less frightening. For instance, Issue 15, which is framed by Dracula writing in his diary in order to work through the shock of his most recent death, presents a series of vignettes narrated by Dracula himself. A pensive Dracula is a relatable Dracula, something Wolfman will only entertain towards the end of the series.
Over the course of seven issues (23-24, 26-29, plus Chillers), Dracula involves himself in the affairs of young Sheila Whittier, heiress to Castle Dunwick.[1] He comes to the Castle intending to kill Sheila, but is taken aback by her manner and her plight. Not at all surprised to see him, she says, “You’re back? Are you going to hurt me again? Haven’t you done enough to me already?” He sees that her back is covered in fresh scars, and replies, “You are mistaken, Sheila Whittier. I am not one of your tormentors.” To the contrary, he saves her life several times in their first meeting. It turns out that her uncle, who left her the castle, is haunting it; what’s more, he’s actually her father, murdered by her mother, whom he subsequently haunted and drove insane. He intends to sacrifice her to the “dark gods” in order to secure himself a place of honor in hell.
Dracula makes short work of the ghost by the end of issue 23, but by that point, Wolfman has already succeeded in turning this storyline into a set of narrative baits-and-switches. What begins as Dracula’s plan to secure himself a castle in England turns into something the vampire could not have anticipated: he has walked onto the set of a Gothic novel and become merely one of the players in Sheila’s story. Soon he puts Sheila in her place, using her as a pawn in his schemes for world domination, but once again, the story runs away from him (as, eventually, does Sheila).
Issue 24 begins with Rachel and Frank talking on the same bridge Frank tried to jump off of the day they first met. Since they both believe Dracula is dead, they’ve decided to give their relationship a try. As Dracula watches from the distance, mocking them to himself, the narrator tells us:
Their lips meet, but there is nothing; this is a hollow kiss devoid of any emotion other than pity and helplessness for a man this woman truly loves…
And for Frank Drake, not even the imagined warmth of this momentary embrace can erase the coldness and hatred he feels for himself.
Even though they think their enemy is dead, the emotional logic of Tomb of Dracula dictates that there is only so much ambient emotional energy to go around in a given story. Over the next several issues, the affective focus will be on Dracula, Sheila, and (soon enough) David. Alone in her “creaking manse,” Sheila contemplates the new man in her life:
There’s nothing wrong with my waiting here for him. Why must I feel guilty?
He’s my man…and I know he isn’t evil like they all say he is.
I know that say he’s a murderer…a hellish vampire who preys on innocence for survival—
—who corrupts everything he dares profane with his deathly touch.
But they’re all wrong. I’ve seen him. I know him. I do…I really do.
He is my man, isn’t he? And my man couldn’t be dressed in a cloak of sin.
Could he?
Yet even as she finishers her monologue, the last panel shows Dracula attacking (and presumably killing) a woman on the street).
Soon Dracula sends Sheila on a mission, arranging for her to meet David Eschol, a man whose antiquarian rabbi father was killed for the sake of a mysterious chimera statue imbued with vast magical powers. Pretending to be from a museum, she quickly establishes a connection with him. They immediately hit it off, and as a result, Dracula’s scheming has inadvertently placed him in one corner of a love triangle. By issue 28, all three of them are captives of the mysterious Dr. Sun, who has taken possession of the chimera. Using its powers, Dr. Sun forces each of them into a his or her own transparently symbolic psychodrama. David imagines himself as Moses before the burning bush, discovering that it is a vehicle of Satan, not God. Sheila is romanced by Dracula, who turns into a laughing skeleton in her arms. Dracula is nearly killed by his assembled enemies. When Dracula snaps out of his trance, he mercilessly kills all of Dr. Sun’s minions, prompting Sheila to grab the chimera and smash it before either he or David can take possession of it. As she and David leave, she tells Dracula:
I thought I loved you, Vlad. Maybe because you saved me—were beside me when I most needed someone there.
But I was blind not to see what you truly were, and to ignore what I did see.
[…]
Goodbye, Vlad. Keep Castle Dunwick—do what you wish with it. It’s yours now. I no longer need it.
Goodbye, my almost-love. I pity you—truly I do.”
Infuirated, Dracula yells at her to come back: “You can’t leave me unless I tell you to. You can’t leave your master—"
Remarkably, he lets Sheila and David go without attacking them. Where Sheila grows to understand Dracula, and therefore herself, better, and understands that her sentiments are false, Dracula is appalled to discover that, unnoticed, he has developed actual feelings.
The next issue begins with Dracula attacking random humans in a fit of rage, resolving to kill Sheila and David. David, meanwhile, has decided he must kill Dracula if they are ever to be free. As so often happens in vampire movies, he reaches Dracula’s coffin just as the sun sets. All the words spoken are by Dracula (“Sheila Whitter is mine, boy—and what is mine cannot be lightly taken from me”), but the captions all follow David. For a silent page (interrupted only by Dracula’s laughter) David tries to run away, while the captions render David’s struggle for survival a matter of faith and fate:
The youth runs, though his father had taught him not to run from evil, but to face it—to ignore it.
“The eyes of God are everywhere: observing the evil and the good.” David was told this.
“God does not leave the virtuous man hungry. But he thwarts the greed of the wicked,” David was taught.
And though it may be true that God does honor the virtuous—perhaps he does destroy the wicked…
…tonight he does not.
And at last, David screams.
The last four pages reenact both Sheila’s first encounter with Dracula and the end of the previous issue. She opens the door to find David’s corpse, held in a standing position by Dracula, who informs her the the is come to take her “back home.” The caption reads: "Months before, Dracula’s first words to this frightened girl were “I am not one of your tormentors.” The lord of darkness lied. "
Where previously Dracula was an intruder in a haunted house doing its best to expel its new owner, now he has to gain Sheila’s permission to enter the late David’s apartment. Sheila invites him in, not realizing he could not enter without an invitation. Yet just as in the previous issue, when Sheila speaks to Dracula with an authority that surprises them both, she once again pronounces judgment on the lord of vampires. But this time it is also a diagnosis, a rejection of the very idea that Dracula has a self worthy of her affection.:
Sheila. “You have no heart! You have no soul!/ You’re a demon! A damnable lecherous demigod!/ Show me what kind of man you are, Dracula! Beat me! Beat me for my hating you! Beat me for my once loving you!”
Dracula: “I…can…not… beat you. / I…care…..”
Sheila (climbing onto the windowsill): “You care only for yourself! I was just a convenience!”
Dracula: “You are wrong, Shiela. Perhaps we both…”
Sheila: “Get away from me, Dracula! If I was ever yours before—/ I won’t be anymore! Never any more!”
When they first met, Sheila fell from a balcony, only to be saved by Dracula. Now she jumps to her death, with Dracula flying after her, too late to catch her: “Sheila! /No! / No!/ I didn’t mean….”
In his depiction of Sheila, Wolfman has laid a trap both for the reader and for Dracula. Initially, she seems fragile, naive, and deluded. And yet Dracula, whose tendency to launch into florid monologues has long been a familiar feature of the comic, is reduced by Sheila to incoherent pleading two issues in a row. They forge an emotional connection, but it is in the nature of both the narrative and Dracula himself that there is only room for one of them to have full subjectivity at a given time. We saw earlier that Sheila could at least wrestle with her doubts about Dracula in his absence, and also the she tended to be less expressive in his presence. But when she asserts her own will, Dracula’s fades. At the same time, the reader, faced with an inarticulate vampire, gains access to an aspect of his inner life usually occluded by his constant talking: an emotional, needy creature who can either be dominant or submissive, but never equal.
Thus when the next issue begins with Dracula standing over her grave, he has regained his composure and his facility with words:
This is not the way I wished it to end.
It is important that you believe that, Shiela.
But you could not accept me for what I am…what I must ever be, could you, my dear?
Yet I—I accepted you—and never once did I drape you in illusion.
Had you held me dear for what I am, perhaps there would have been a tomorrow—
—instead of a timeless, endless nothingness.
Farewell, Shiela Whittier—rest in the peace you never had in life. (Issue 30)
It’s a nice speech, but it’s also disingenuous: Dracula didn’t “drape Sheila in illusion,” because he never bothered to find out who she really was. But as the capstone to the Sheila storyline, it also calls into question Shiela’s own conclusions about the vampire: “You have no heart! You have no soul!” In the context of the comic’s vampire lore, she is close to correct, in that vampires are generally portrayed as soulless, while their physical hearts are only the last vestige of human vulnerability (the weak spot to be penetrated by a wooden stake). But all of his mixed responses to Sheila, combined with his somber, nostalgic mood after her death, are a sign that Dracula is more than his exterior, and more than simply monster. He is not good, to be sure, and he is capable of endless self-deception. But, to borrow the phrasing of Stan Lee, does that not make him somewhat….human?
The captions in the beginning of issue 30 emphasize Dracula’s sadness and loneliness, following him back to the castle where, as he so often does after a setback, Dracula recalls moments from his past in his diary. These stories are all about different times in his undead existence when he allowed himself to be emotionally vulnerable, but for Dracula, the moral is simple: he always survives and always conquers. Thus this issue, and the entire storyline, enacts the basic pattern Tomb of Dracula provides its protagonist: opening himself up to others leads him to periods of introspection that he must reject in order to go on. [1]
Note
[1] Wolfman, notorious among comics professionals for his poor spelling, alternately gives her name as “Shiela” and “Sheila.” Since “Sheila” is the standard, that is what I am going with.
[2] At the time, Wolfman said that he planned to do a diary every fifteen issues: “The diaries come along only after southing major has happened to Dracula that forces him to sit down and consider things, m to pause his plans, whatever they are” (“Department of InFOOMation,” FOOM 8 (1974), n.p. )