Issue(s): Tomb of Dracula #49
Cover Date: Oct 76
Title: "...And with the word there shall come death!"
Credits:
Marv Wolfman - Writer
Gene Colan - Penciler
Tom Palmer - Inker

Review/plot:
Last issue's main story and the story for this issue have me wondering if Wolfman originally had them in mind for a black & white magazine or similar. They fit fine here and i don't think they were "ported" from something intended for the magazines, just possibly that Wolfman originally had the plot idea for a format where a one-and-done plot made more sense. On the other hand, Wolfman may just intentionally be leaving breathers before the big blast coming up with issue #50; he's certainly done that before. And the subplot elements of the books continue to build and in fact weave back into the main plot, so it's not like we're at a total standstill here.

But the main plot has a mentally ill mystic (or mutant?) who constructs an alternate reality for herself and populates it with "friends" from literary works like The Three Musketeers and Tom Sawyer. She's always wanted to include Dracula amongst her friends but always had trouble with that until now, when she unknowingly pulls in the real Dracula. Dracula obviously isn't happy about that...

...so he winds up fighting the other characters until the woman eventually sends him away.

The most potentially interesting thing is that among the woman's "friends" is a Frankenstein Monster, and of course he also exists in the Marvel universe (and i didn't point it out, but we saw in his series that Mary Shelley's book exists also, just like Bram Stoker's Dracula). So you might think that he would also be pulled in like Dracula. But Dracula confirms that this version is just a replica.

We're seeing more guest stars in this series than we did in the earlier half (Brother Voodoo and Dr. Strange so far, Silver Surfer and Hellstorm coming up), and i almost wonder if this issue with the hodgepodge of literary adventure heroes is a parody of that.

In our subplots, Blade continues to fight his doppelganger...

...who claims to be "created from you. I was born and nurtured from the seed planted when my master murdered your mother".

The two become merged together as they fight, and eventually the real Blade is subsumed into the doppelganger.

I briefly wondered if this merging would result in Blade becoming the half-vampire that i know him as (mainly from the movie version), but that actually happens much later.

And Frank and Harold try to infiltrate the Church of Satan but immediately get captured.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Subplots continue directly from last issue and into next issue, but as with last issue i'm keeping this in a separate entry.

References:

• Dracula fought the real Frankenstein Monster in Frankenstein #7-9 (which take place earlier than the scope of my project).

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Tomb of Dracula vol. #2