Dracula Lives! #7 - Marvel

Yet another cover by Luis Dominguez, featuring quite possibly the dumbest damsel-in-distress ever--if she snuck in to the Count's chamber and saw that the coffin was open, she should've just turned right around. If it was closed, then she went over to it, and had to open it up all the way before noticing it was empty. Sheesh, if you play a cat-and-mouse game with the Prince of Darkness, you need to play to win.

The opener is "Here Comes The Death Man" by Gerry Conway and Vincente Alcazar, where Dracula stumbles into the middle of a mysterious conspiracy going on in Washington, DC. Some sci-fi-y elements mix a little uneasily with the Dracula stuff, but overall its not a bad tale.

Part 2 of "Blood Moon", a prose Dracula story, is next, by Thompson O'Rourke and spot illustrations by Ernie Chua. Third is "Assault of the She-Pirate!" by Mike Friedrich and the legendary George Evans, someone whose artwork you didn't see in Marvel mags much. It's about a gutsy female pirate(I guess you'd have to be gutsy) who steals a beloved pendant of Dracula's, and is not even scared of him when he confronts her. But like I said before, if you plan on taking on Dracula, play to win. Nice, nice art job by Evans.

Tony Isabella provides a review of Hammer's Taste The Blood of Dracula(verdict: Thumbs Down), and then we get chapter three of the Bram Stoker adaptation by Roy Thomas and Dick Giordano, firing on all cylinders. This chapter features the memorable sequence where Dracula "feeds" his three female vampire subjects by throwing them a bag containing something moving...and wailing like an infant. Ewwww.

This issue ends with a text piece(unusual) about current appearances of Dracula in entertainment, like movies, plays, and books, by Carla Joseph.

A really solid issue, with no reprints of old Atlas/Marvel horror comics and instead featuring all new material, all of it good. One of the best of the series so far.