This Vampire…This Man!
Dracula is trapped in human form during issues 65 through 68, a period whose cover dates run from July 1978 through February 1979. [1] This is a long time to follow the trials and tribulations of a defanged vampire. But it is not without precedent. From the moment Lee & Kirby introduced monstrous protagonists in the form of The Thing and The Hulk, short-term cures stripping them of their superhuman powers became a perennial trope. When Marvel launched its horror line (of which Tomb of Dracula was by this point the lone survivor), nearly all these new characters were cursed by magic or science, and desperate for a remedy. [2] Usually, such stories were blunt reminders of the positive side of the character’s curse (the ability to do good for others). But Dracula never wanted to be human.
This story sequence had one more recent, and more relevant, precedent. In December 1977, just five months before Satan stripped Dracula of his vampiric abilities, Howard the Duck 19 featured a story in which Howard was stuck in human form against his will. Though Howard was no villain, he was definitely misanthropic, so find himself in the guise of a “hairless ape” left him untethered. Howard and Dracula both end up wandering the streets, encountering some of humanities less inspiring exemplars (Dracula meets a drug addict, while Howard gets a guided tour from a mentally ill homeless man). And both these storylines were drawn by Gene Colan. All of this is a far cry from the Silver Surfer discovering the nobility of blind sculptress Alicia Masters; instead, both Howard and Tomb of Dracula paint a bleak picture of the human condition.
By Issue 66, Dracula, now in Greenwich Village searching for his daughter Lilith (who he hopes will bit him and turn him back into a vampire), resorts to mugging a couple for money. Naturally, Dracula’s reaction to his humiliation is to monologue, but without the pride he usually expressed as a vampire:
Damn! What am I doing? I this what I’ve been reduced to?
I’m nothing more than a common thief!
What? Now I feel doubt? What is happening to me?
I’ve always taken what I need
This isn’t any exception!
Damn it! What have you done to me, Satan?
Why do you make me doubt my actions? Why do you make me worry whether I’ve done right or wrong? I’ve always followed my own rules for—eh?
Yes, to add further to his humiliation, Dracula’s monologue is interrupted. Usually, he somehow manages to hold forth in front of other people as though he were on stage; now, as a human, he can no longer expect the people around him to wait until he is through.
Dracula endures further random adventures and humiliations, with the highlight being his first hamburger (“The meat is too well done. / Where is the blood? Lord, how do these humans exist?”) When he is shot, he discovers that he can’t bear the physical pain to which mortals are subject. And, for once, words fail him:
Dracula tries desperately to say something to this human who has helped him, but the words choke in his throat…
Instead, he merely smiles, before he falls unconscious to the roof.
Later he reaches Lilith, who refuses to help him; she would much rather see him suffer. Janus finds him, and for no apparent reason teleports his father and Harker’s entire crew to Castle Dracula in Transylvania. There Dracula fights his enemies, who are now finally in a position to kill him, and also discovers that the vampires who formerly served him hold him in contempt. On his knees before Harker’s wheelchair, Dracula admits defeat:
I was a great man…a greater vampire, too!
I…I..damn it, man—Look at me!
Lord, this isn’t the way a Dracula should die!
Once…once I thought I’d perish in battle!
Not by a crippled old fool.
God! I don’t want to die this way!
I won’t die this way!
When Dracula even renounces Satan (“That stinking, fetid mockery”), he discovers that the last few minutes have all been an illusion cast by Satan himself. Dracula has called on God, and God will not help him. In renouncing Satan, he has no place in the world. Satan departs, having restored Dracula to his status as a vampire. But the damage is done:
Satan was right—and Dracula foolishly renounced everything he had ever believed.
Like a human in stark terror at the sight of the vampire lord, Dracula had seen his evil, and fell in battle.
But Dracula has not truly fallen. His humiliations are not over; like him, they have simply changed their form. In Dracula’s case, one of the most common clichés proves to be true: he is his own worst enemy. The last two years of Tomb of Dracula do what Marvel Comics had done well for almost two decades, allegorizing an internal conflict by making it external. Again and again, we have been told that Dracula is not just a monster, but “a man,” a term that, in this supernatural context, conveys humanity or individuality as well as gender. The more he awakens to his own suppressed humanity, the more torn he becomes. Being human was not about Dracula’s acceptance of his humanity, but about his discomfort with it. Trapped in human form, Dracula faced antagonists who were human (with the exception of Lilith, whom he himself sought out). Now that he is a vampire again, it is the vampires that will not give him peace.
For the first three pages of Issue 69, Dracula is relentlessly pursued by a swam of the undead in bat form, eventually given refuge by three small children who had been left alone in their farmhouse while their widowed mother takes their gravely ill sister to the doctor’s. She had instructed them to let no one in, but they are unable to stand by as the man banging on their door is torn to pieces by vampire bats. They invite him in, but their crucifix keeps Dracula from feeding. Not receiving an invitation to enter the vampires are on the verge of destroying the children's house, and Dracula finds himself protecting them:
“Use your crucifixes! Save yourself! Believe in your God—He is your only salvation now!”
To save the children, Dracula does the unthinkable: he grabs a crucifix, and, even as it burns his hands, he uses it to push through the horde of vampires and lure them away. In the next and final issue, he is even flying with it in mist form, and even forgets that he is holding it for several pages. At the end of a duel with the vampire who replaced him as lord, Dracula kills the usurper and reclaims his title. He is, however, no closer to contentment.
For most of the series, Wolfman and Colan have managed to keep Draculs as an appealing protagonists without denying his evil, and yet they have also tried to make him develop and grow. This final storyline turns the dilemma they face as storytellers into a series of ultimately unresolvable challenges for Dracula himself. Tomb of Dracula is not metafiction, but by the end, it does become an efficient mechanism for transforming the very contradictions inherent in the comic’s premise into the substance of the protagonist’s inner life.
Notes
[1] By this point, Tomb of Dracula was on a bimonthly schedule.
[2] Jack Russell spent years looking for a cure for they lycanthropy that turned him into the Werewolf by NIght. Johnny Blaze was miserable under the curse that turned him into the Ghost Rider, as was Daimon Hellstrom, burdened with his heritage as the Son of Satan. The mindless Man-Thing couldn’t actually desire a cure, but that did not stop others from wanting a cure on his behalf.