Dracula Lives! #5 - Marvel

Dracula Lives!

This is one of my favorite Dracula covers, by Luis Dominguez. Great use of color, great depth, and just enough titillation to make it the kind of lusty sexy-but-scary vampire image we all have in our collective unconcious.

First up is the opening chapter to Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano's superb adaptation of Bram Stoker's original Dracula book. Giordano did some of his best work here, and it was a dynamite addition to this series.

Next is a text feature by Doug Moench(whose writing output was not limited to writing 10,000 comics a month apparently) called "Transylvnia On A Budget", and then a movie review of Dracula, Prince of Darkness.

The second story is "A Duel of Demons" by Gerry Conway and Frank Springer, featuring the Prince of Darkness meeting and dueling with...Cagliostro!

Next there's a Dracula text story called "Demons in Darkness", also by Conway, with an amazing two-page spread opener by Pablo Marcos featuring Drac about to dine on a small child. Yeesh! Following that is another text piece called "Coffin Chronicles" about current books and films abut the Count.

"When A Vampire Dies" is a reprint tale, which is uncredited, featuring a really creepy vampire boy and the standard twist ending. There's another text feature, "The Dracula Archives", and then we wrap up with "Night Flight of Terror!" by Tony Isabella, Gene Colan, and Marcos.

Terrorists take control of a plane, one that happens to have as one of its passengers...Dracula! Of all the friggin' luck! A fun, goose-bumpy tale, and Colan and Marcos make a really nice art team. One of my favorite Dracula tales, since the setting is so unusual and there's a great what-the-heck-happens-next feel to it.

There's one last one-page feature, "The Boyhood of Dracula" by Isabella and Val Mayerik. The very title conjures up a tension in your mind, since its hard to imagine the epitome of evil ever being something as benign as a boy.

As if all this weren't enough, the inside covers feature a pin-up by Gene Colan standing over his newest conquest, a wonderfully pneumatic damsel. Nice piece, of course--it's by Gene Colan.