Issue(s): Tomb of Dracula #48
Cover Date: Sep 76
Title: "A song for Marianne! / Lost: One vampire! / Dopperlganger!!"
Credits:
Marv Wolfman - Writer
Gene Colan - Penciler
Tom Palmer - Inker

Review/plot:
The nature of this book, with multiple characters that don't always meet on a regular basis, results in frequent extended subplots. For the most part Wolfman and Colan handle that the way any book handles subplots, with a couple of pages devoted to the characters that aren't part of the main story for the issue. But they occasionally experiment with different ideas, as they did a while back when Taj and Frank Drake were engaged in separate subplots and Colan depicted them running side-by-side down the pages. And in this issue where there's a main 12 page story followed by 3 pages focused on the Quincy Harker group (which isn't doing much. per usual) and then 2 pages moving the Blade / Hannibal King story forward. As you can see from the multiple Titles, they are treated like three separate stories even though the extra 5 pages could have easily just been inserted into the main story.

The main story is a standalone story that starts with a vampire named Marianne begging for her (unseen at first) audience to kill her. She then tells her story. She had multiple run-ins with Dracula over the course of her life, with her father and her husband getting turned into vampires, and her husband eventually turning her into a vampire. The twist ending is that she's telling her story to Dracula who, now that he's with Domini, understands and grants her request to die so that she can be with her husband.

By the way, Marianne's father was a Cap'n Cutlass, which is pretty awesome.

The second story has Frank Drake complaining about Rachel Van Helsing's breaking up with him (with a classy "brains are in their pantyhose" line)...

...and then deciding to go take on Dracula at the Satanist's church. Aurora insists that Harold go along with him.

They are secretly trailed by Rachel.

And then after everyone leaves, we see that Quincy is having heart trouble.

And the final story has Hannibal King and Blade encountering a Blade doppelganger.

The main story is a generic (doesn't mean bad) horror story that nonetheless fits well with the current themes going on for Dracula, and it's nice to see Wolfman juggling the subplots (even if as usual i'm wondering why the vampire hunters are tolerating Harold H. Harold hanging around).

Quality Rating: B

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Blade subplot continues directly into next issue, but due to the odd format of this issue i'm keeping it in its own entry.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Tomb of Dracula vol. #2

Boy, Drake sure was a pain in the ass when he moped over Rachel! Wish Saint would go pee on his leg and then go chomp on Harold's ankle because, well, it's Harold.