Issue(s): Dracula Lives #8, Dracula Lives #9
Cover Date: Sep-Nov 74
Title: "Last walk on the nightside" / "The lady who collected Dracula" / "A night in the unlife!"
Credits:
Doug Moench / Gerry Conway - Writer
Tony DeZuniga / Frank Robbins / Alfredo P. Alcala- Penciler
Tony DeZuniga / Frank Springer / Alfredo P. Alcala - Inker

Review/plot:
This entry covers a modern day two-part story by Doug Moench that runs through issues #8-9 with art on #8 by Tony DeZuniga and on #9 by Frank Robbins & Frank Springer. And this entry also includes another modern day story in issue #9 by Gerry Conway and Alfredo P. Alcala.

The Doug Moench story is a "cop on his last day of the job" plot, with the cop dealing with Dracula's actions in New York City before coming home to finding that his wife's been turned into a vampire.

The art can get pretty bizarre, and this is before we get to the Frank Robbins stuff.

Dracula winds up getting driven off by a silver plaque...

...before the cop finds out that Dracula has bitten his wife.

The cop winds up impaling his wife...

...which of course makes him a suspect in her death. But they don't arrest him, so he continues to hunt for Dracula, and eventually convinces the cops that there is a real vampire on the loose. And, with his wife dead, he enlists. The second half is actually more focused on the idea that the "decadent rich" are treating Dracula like a cult hero and are buying up stuff stolen from his castle. So Dracula is going around pursuing the people that took his stuff.

In the Conway story, Dracula fails to make friends with a dog that he's stuck in the storage car of a train with.

Then Dracula goes and kills a girl that was goading her boyfriend into stealing from a jewelry store.

It's possible that at this point we have run out of things to say about Dracula.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Just for the sake of containing these standalone stories, i'm keeping all of the modern day appearances in Dracula Lives #4-13 between Tomb of Dracula #21-22.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Tomb of Dracula vol. 4

Doug Moench's story titles were taken from the Lou Reed song "Walk on the Wild side" and the short story "The Man Who Collected Poe".

The title to Gerry Conway's story could be seen as an inversion of the Beatles' classic "A Day in the Life" from "Sgt. Pepper".