Issue(s): Tomb of Dracula #45, Tomb of Dracula #46
Cover Date: Jun-Jul 76
Title: "Crossfire!" / "Let us be wed in unholy matrimony"
Credits:
Marv Wolfman - Writer
Gene Coleman - Penciler
Tom Palmer - Inker

Review/plot:
Dr. Strange and Wong leave Dracula's dried up corpse behind, and as soon as they leave he dispels the illusion.

The top splash panel above was added by Gene Colan for my Wedding of Dracula reprint; it's not in the original issue.

Contemplating his near defeat, Dracula opts for a new strategy. He contacts Harold H. Harold...

...who puts him in touch with a Satanist named Anton Lupeski. Lupeski offers a woman named Domini as Dracula's bride. Dracula pretends that he actually is Satan, but we'll learn that Lupeski knows the truth and is attempting to manipulate Dracula for his own ends.

The Satanists' church has a picture of Jesus, which they keep around to mock.

While all of this is going on, an employee challenges the pollution policies of American Chemron Industries, and he is killed for making trouble. His body is disposed of in the very pollution he wanted to expose, but he comes back as a pollution-zombie-monster seeking revenge.

He kills the members of the Chemron executive team one by one, in standard horror movie fashion. But Dracula fancies one of the female employees for himself, and he gets into a fight with the zombie-monster. However, the monster is able to kill its victims before Dracula can stop him. Then it melts away before Dracula can seek his revenge.

Meanwhile, Frank Drake becomes more violent and angry with his failures to defeat Dracula.

The subplot with Blade and Hannibal King was cut out of the Wedding of Dracula reprint, which is surprising considering the popularity of Blade at the time it was reprinted.

Peeking at my scan of the original issue, the gist of it is that Deacon Frost has created a duplicate of Blade and Hannibal King is also after Frost because he's the vampire that sired him.

There is a lot going on in these issues, and it's really good if you've been following the various subplots all along, but it doesn't lend well to being reprinted as a standalone story. I got this issue through the Wedding of Dracula reprint, and seeing some of the subplots when i later scanned the original issues is what started to get me thinking about going back and filling in my run, which i've subsequently done. For my personal copy i've assembled a Frankenstein-style issue so that i can have the extra Dr. Strange page from the reprint and colored pages for the main plot, but i've added black & white subplot scenes from the Essentials trade. I need to be stopped.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - first appearance of Domini

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Dracula meets an old woman that he once met as a young girl in Madrid in Dracula Lives #9.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: The Wedding of Dracula #1 / Essential Tomb of Dracula vol. #2

According to Wolfman, succeeding issues involving the Christ Painting were subject to constant interference by the Comics Code, resulting in huge rewrites in dialogue.