The League of Inherited Trauma
The defects in Frank’s characterization are only part of the story. Once the focus shifts to Rachel, Quincy, and (eventually, if briefly) Taj, Wolfman finds the ideal foils for a centuries-old monster: heroes whose trauma runs deep. The problem with Frank is that we see the precipitating trauma on the pages of the very first issue when Dracula kills this otherwise feckless rich boy's fiancée. Rachel and Quincy, by contrast, come from families on which Dracula has been inflicting suffering for generations. For them, Dracula is inherited trauma made manifest.
This is one of the ways that Tomb of Dracula gets at the title character indirectly, in that Dracula has long since colonized Rachel’s and Quincy’s inner lives. There is no Quincy Harker or Rachel Van Helsing without him. Wolfman was quoted as saying that he didn’t feel he really got a handle on the title until issues 12-14, which makes sense, since issues 12 and 13 are when he managed to weave inherited trauma and new trauma together. When Wolfman introduces Quincy Harker in Issue 7, he also adds Quincy’s daughter Edith. The fact that there is no mother present is, of course, attributable to Dracula, who killed Quincy’s wife years ago. Edith is no vampire slayer, but she knows just enough to be subject to a healthy, well-informed terror in the face of the undead. In Issue 12, Dracula kidnaps Edith and lures Quincy’s team into one of the numerous “ancient manses” that horror comics seem to place on every corner.
After a series of gothic brushes with death (weak floorboards, tarantulas), they find Edith on a balcony high above them. Edith tells them to keep away, because Dracula has already turned her into a vampire—she can no longer trust herself around the living: “If you won’t leave, father—then I have no other choice. / You must stop me—you must—before I kill!/ You must! You must!” She leaps from the balcony: “The body falls, and never changes….never lifts itself from its long, deadly leap…/ and it lands very, very hard.” Quincy’s calls out, but his words are dwarfed by a sicking sound effect: “THUD!”
Quincy laments his latest loss, but Frank informs him that Edith (who showed incredible strength of will by not turning into a bat and saving herself) is still not dead. Quincy honors Edith’s wishes and stabs her through the heart. The next two panels (Edith writhing in agony and Quincy crying) are wordless. [1]
Edith’s death is much more effective than that of Frank’s fiancée, and not only because the reader has had some time to get to know her. Her murder by Dracula is situated within the larger context of the vampire hunters’ never-ending traumas at the vampire’s hands. As Quincy exclaims, “First my dear Sonya, my loving wife—now Edith—now Edith!” [2] In the very next issue, Quincy says:
“I remember once, it must have been a long time ago—my lord, she was only three or four, yet she knew all about my work—/—she said “Daddy, I don’t ever want to become a vampire. Please don’t let me become one.’ / And I would laugh and tell her not to worry, that I would protect her always. / Oh God—Oh, God."
Quincy’s fresh new grief serves as the impetus for a spontaneous discussion that serves as a cross between a support group and a competitive mourning contest. Blade, the young, hip Black vampire slayer Wolfman and Colan created just a few issues before, lashes out at Frank:
“You didn’t think I was chasin’ vampires for my health, did you, Drake?
“You said I didn’t know what it’s like to lose someone—man—I’m the original loser!”
Blad then tells his new companions that, when his mother was in labor, she was bitten and killed by a white-haired vampire moments before Vlad was born:
“So don’t hand me any of your bull about mournin’ the dead—‘cause I’ve been through it all before—/—an I’m still livin’ with it, every time I look in the mirror an’ realize that a woman died given’ birth to me—me!”
Blade’s words prove his worthiness in joining Qunicy’s band of mourning misfits while also emphasizing his separate destiny. His trauma was not caused by Dracula, a fact that makes him much more suitable for subsequent, non-Dracula related adventures than his companions are. [3] It is also fitting that he connects his guilt to what he sees in the mirror. Not only will he subsequently fight his own vampire doppelgänger (a long story that need not be related here), he highlights the metaphor behind the narrative function served by all the humans in the supporting cast. Vampires such as Dracula do not show up in mirrors; they are incapable of seeing themselves as other see them. It is up to Quincy, Rachel, and Frank to mirror Dracula back to him.
The scars that these characters bear are both metaphorical and real. The same issue that ends with Edith’s death highlights the disabling and disfiguring effect Dracula has on those around him. As they try to rescue Edith from the Victorian nightmare home in which she is kept, Quincy’s room to maneuver is limited. He uses a wheelchair, thanks, of course, to Dracula. Meanwhile, Dracula has sent bats to attack Rachel and Frank; they start clawing at Rachel’s face before Taj chases them away. What happens next, or, rather, over the course of the next several years of Tomb of Dracula, is unprecedented. Rachel’s face is covered in scratches a few pages after the attack, but these settle into permanent scars that become one of her defining physical features.
Soon Rachel and Frank embark on an unsatisfying romance (unsatisfying both for them and the readers), defined by Frank’s continued attempts to prove his manliness and independence and Rachel’s tendency towards emotional withdrawal. In the last issue, after Quincy finally kills Dracula, Rachel receives a letter that Quincy wrote for her write before his confrontation with the vampire. He encourages her to give Frank a chance, because he is worried about what is happening to her:
I write because I have great love for you and I fear you are becoming too much like me. I have lost my humor about life, for I became obsessed with death. Rachel, you are too young to be so grim, you have so much ahead of you…please, my dear, don’t cut yourself off rom the joy life can bring. […] Give yourself a chance to experience all that you have missed. I am an old man, Rachel, but if you are reading his now, I am a happy man...
With Dracula dead (temporarily, but for the purposes of the now-cancelled Tomb of Dracula, permanently), the surviving supporting cast finally has the chance to live for themselves, rather than as physical manifestations of the damage wrought by their enemy.[4]
Notes
[1] Unfortunately, they are followed by Frank Drake's melodramatic resolution to track down Dracula and kill him.
[2] Later Quincy’s wife will be referred to as Elizabeth.
[3] Blade, of course, went on to be the star of three successful feature films, plus a television series. Frank Drake, Quincy Harker, and Rachel Van Helsing did not.
[4] It doesn’t go well for them, although this it the work of late writers. After a passing reference to her failed romance, Chris Claremont has Rachel turned into a vampire by Dracula in Uncanny X-Men Annual 6, while Frank Drake briefly becomes the least useful member of a vampire-hunting team in the 1990s.