"Through a Blog Lightly"
Tomb of Dracula No. 4 (Sept ‘72)
‘Through a Mirror Darkly!’
Goodwin/Colan /Palmer (20 pp.)
The second of the two issues of this title to be written by Archie Goodwin continues directly on from the previous one, with Ilsa Strangway inviting Dracula into her abode and subsequently striking a bargain with him. The readers of this review shall have as good an idea as I did that somehow the bargain will grow a snake-like head and bite her in the foot, and indeed this has come to pass by the end of this issue. However, Dracula does end up with his magic mirror.
Frank Drake, Rachel Van Helsing and Taj continue to hunt Dracula, enlisting via Inspector Chelm of Scotland Yard a local Police Officer who, like Chelm before him, has to be convinced that vampires exist by personal experience. Dracula continues to be aided by the vampirised Clifton Graves. In the closing sequence, Dracula tries to escape from the vampire hunters via his magic mirror and ends up dragging Taj through this portal to another time or dimension with him, just in time for this incident to be witnessed by Van Helsing and Drake.
Sadly, as we shall see next time, this is the last Goodwin wrote of Dracula. Reading this series for the first time, I find myself disappointed by this: after Gerry Conway made a good start in the first two issues, Goodwin seems to be developing the series very well here, introducing new characters but not flooding us with them, structuring the episodes well with neither too little nor too much plot material in each issue and writing better dialogue than Conway did.
The art this issue is by Gene Colan on pencils and Tom Palmer on inks, thus making this the first issue to have the same creative team as the previous one (it is even still lettered by John Costanza). However, we do have a first this time around: this is the first issue wherein the pages are not numbered. One suspects that the page count is about to fall…
The blurb at the bottom of the cover - which I suspect is in theory the title of the story - is ‘the Bride of Dracula!’ which puzzled me a while after reading the story; then I worked out that it refers to Ilsa, with ‘Bride’ being used as a figure of speech to mean ‘dupe’, ‘pawn’ or the like. The cover background is purple, with the logo being white on red. As with last issue’s debut of the classic Dracula logo picture in a circle, the colourist has bothered to colour in Dracula’s sash. The cover itself appears to be by Neal Adams - with John Romita finding it necessary to redraw the figure of the title character.
15 Sept 08
‘Through a Mirror Darkly!’
Goodwin/Colan /Palmer (20 pp.)
The second of the two issues of this title to be written by Archie Goodwin continues directly on from the previous one, with Ilsa Strangway inviting Dracula into her abode and subsequently striking a bargain with him. The readers of this review shall have as good an idea as I did that somehow the bargain will grow a snake-like head and bite her in the foot, and indeed this has come to pass by the end of this issue. However, Dracula does end up with his magic mirror.
Frank Drake, Rachel Van Helsing and Taj continue to hunt Dracula, enlisting via Inspector Chelm of Scotland Yard a local Police Officer who, like Chelm before him, has to be convinced that vampires exist by personal experience. Dracula continues to be aided by the vampirised Clifton Graves. In the closing sequence, Dracula tries to escape from the vampire hunters via his magic mirror and ends up dragging Taj through this portal to another time or dimension with him, just in time for this incident to be witnessed by Van Helsing and Drake.
Sadly, as we shall see next time, this is the last Goodwin wrote of Dracula. Reading this series for the first time, I find myself disappointed by this: after Gerry Conway made a good start in the first two issues, Goodwin seems to be developing the series very well here, introducing new characters but not flooding us with them, structuring the episodes well with neither too little nor too much plot material in each issue and writing better dialogue than Conway did.
The art this issue is by Gene Colan on pencils and Tom Palmer on inks, thus making this the first issue to have the same creative team as the previous one (it is even still lettered by John Costanza). However, we do have a first this time around: this is the first issue wherein the pages are not numbered. One suspects that the page count is about to fall…
The blurb at the bottom of the cover - which I suspect is in theory the title of the story - is ‘the Bride of Dracula!’ which puzzled me a while after reading the story; then I worked out that it refers to Ilsa, with ‘Bride’ being used as a figure of speech to mean ‘dupe’, ‘pawn’ or the like. The cover background is purple, with the logo being white on red. As with last issue’s debut of the classic Dracula logo picture in a circle, the colourist has bothered to colour in Dracula’s sash. The cover itself appears to be by Neal Adams - with John Romita finding it necessary to redraw the figure of the title character.
15 Sept 08