Issue(s): Tomb of Dracula #62, Tomb of Dracula #63, Tomb of Dracula #64, Tomb of Dracula #65
Cover Date: Jan-Jul 78
Title: "What lurks beneath Satan's Hill?" / "The road to Hell!" / "Life after undeath" / "Where no vampire has gone before!"
Credits:
Marv Wolfman - Writer
Gene Colan - Penciler
Tom Palmer - Inker

Review/plot:
The plotting on Tomb of Dracula continues to get more bizarre, which is especially odd considering the fact that the book has been shifted to a bi-monthly schedule. If anything, the one and done Strange Tales style horror stories that at least offered a complete tale every issue (while maybe moving forward some subplots) would be more appropriate now that readers had to wait two months for the next installment. Instead Wolfman takes us down a circuitous route that seemingly drops a number of threads before, after three issues (or half a year!), landing in a place that i think does successfully shake up the series by removing Dracula's vampirism. To get there, though we have to go through these issues full of inconclusive confrontations with Janus...

...a tentacle monster...

...a Roman gladiator pastiche...

...and finally a meeting between Dracula and Satan that illuminates nothing (although Colan's depiction of Satan is admittedly cool).

As part of the tentacle monster plot, there's a creepy sequence showing it leaving behind hairless, bloodless victims...

...that subsequently get reanimated. But it doesn't go anywhere except to lead Dracula to the house where he eventually meets Satan.

A more promising development that also ultimately goes nowhere is a guest appearance by Topaz of Werewolf By Night fame.

She's also been brought to the Satan house by the tentacle monster on behalf of Satan.

Satan has also summoned Frank Drake to the house (and Rachel Van Helsing follows). Satan tells the group that he's gathered Dracula and all of his relations except Lilith, who already serves him fully. He's brought Topaz because she's destined to become powerful enough to destroy him when she reaches her 21st birthday.

It comes out - very ponderously - that Satan doesn't feel that Dracula really serves him, and furthermore the arrival of Janus on Earth has alarmed Satan since Janus has the power to threaten his tenuous balance with God, so he wants to get rid of Dracula to make Janus go away.

After taking care of Dracula, Satan turns to Topaz, but it turns out that telling Topaz about her potential allows her to reach it early, and she's able to fight back.

It's not clear exactly what happens to Topaz (or what the point of including her in the story at all was; it's suggested that God put the idea of attacking Topaz into Satan's head as an instrument of his demise, but what's the narrative purpose in including her as a deus ex machina?). We'll later find that she's stuck in Hell until she's released in the aftermath of Franklin Richards defeating Mephisto during John Byrne's Fantastic Four run. That also suggests that the "Satan" we saw here is actually Mephisto, and the MCP does list Mephisto as the character that appears in this arc (although you could make the argument that she got bumped from Satan's Hell to Mephisto's realm as part of the battle. On the other hand, Marvel's back and forth regarding Satan and Mephisto makes my head hurt, so i'm just going with the MCP).

You'd think a meeting between Dracula and his nominative God would be interesting and/or would tie in to the recent Satanist plotline, but neither is true except in the very tangential way that the Satanist plotline led to the still unexplained Janus.

As for what Satan actually did to Dracula, we find that he's been sent back to Earth, but as a human.

Rachel Van Helsing is there when he returns, but she fails to kill or even capture him (the comic doesn't even show her try) and she's soon back to the Vampire Hunter Knitting Circle with a fresh reason for why the group can't hunt Dracula down.

Would someone call Blade, please? These people are hopeless. Have they lived through the first 60 issues of this series or not? They know Dracula will find a way out of this, so they should get him now while he's weak.

I also love that Janus is hanging out with them now. I guess the group has seen a lot but you'd think the suddenly aged, formerly dead, golden skinned man would merit some conversation. He shouldn't just suddenly show up and chill with the group.

All that said, i do like the scenario of Dracula experiencing life as a human...

...although despite his humanity he sure seems like he's still hella strong.

After helping out a junkie woman and winding up getting called a hero, resulting in him getting photographed for the first time...

...Dracula decides to go to New York to try to get his daughter Lilith to re-sire him.

We'll see more of Dracula dealing with being human next issue.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Dracula is already in New York at the beginning of next issue.

References:

• Dracula knows Topaz from Tomb of Dracula #18 and Werewolf By Night #15.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Tomb of Dracula vol. #3

This issue is the major problem I have with Gillis's Strange Tales series. In this issue, it's stated that Topaz will gain VAST powers when she turns 21- enough to destroy Satan and eliminate evil- and free will- throughout the world. Topaz turns 21 in Strange Tales 1- and Gillis references the prophecy about her increased powers in that issue- and all she can do is ... heal Wong. You would think that Strange would try to use her increased powers to stop the demons but Gillis mostly treats her increased powers as nothing special.

Wong was arguably dead before she healed him - maybe doing a resurrection right away burned off a lot of her power...

The Vampire Hunter Knitting Circle might seem less impotent, if the magazine used the time between the group confronting Dracula, if they went through the basics of slaying all the random vampire minions that Dracula created.

It would make them seem more heroic, and eliminate the question of what happens to all of the vampire thralls Wolfman leaves out there. It would seem more like a hunt as they followed up the leads to get them to Dracula.

It is certainly a lost opportunity.

It's a great point, Chris, and it's exactly why Blade comes across as more successful than the rest.

If this is a knitting club, someone needs to take responsibility for that wretched pullover/turtleneck combo Frank Drake has on. Perhaps he could have gone with basic white plus an ascot, and while they were at it dye Rachel's hair red and put her in a miniskirt, because Fred and Daphne would be more effective for Harker at this point. At least they'd have a groovy van they could soup up! Saint would have been a better partner to Scooby than Scrappy ever was. Speaking of Saint, is that a "what's up with this crap?" look in his eyes? And what about Janus just chillin' in the background? Seriously, as much as I revere this series, Marv and Gene's biggest mistake was not having their two most compelling and useful good guys, Blade and Hannibal King, just fall through the cracks and not have them around for the final push to the series' finish line.

Does anybody know why Satan is using the 1st person plural to refer to himself here? "We who call ourselves Satan..."? Who are "we?" Is that a plot point? I've long been underwhelmed by Marvel's characterizations of Satan/Mephisto, mostly because of all the ways they tiptoe around the religious implications. But this is the most interesting take on the character that I've seen so far (Marvel-wise).

The anti-Dracula knitting club repeatedly lets Dracula live because they're hooked on the game. Deep down they don't really want to kill him, because that would end their game. Then they'd have to find some other hobby to give their lives meaning, and they just don't feel up to that challenge. Thus they make up flimsy excuses to keep the game going.

More pointedly, Drac refrains from killing them simply because the writer wants to keep them around, and this really kills the realism. Drac's reasons for letting them live are never convincing; we know that if anybody else annoyed him so much, he'd just snuff them out without a second thought.

Good morning, Holt. Satan is probably just using the royal we. Which, when you say it out loud, sounds like an awesome new Nintendo gaming system.

Good morning Andrew. We of the Holt haven't read these old Dracula stories before, and were hoping that maybe Satan, Mephisto, Lucifer, Surtur, Hades, and all the other hot Marvel Satanic Majesties might have been conspiring behind the scenes via the Dread Dormammu's scrying screens. Which would be cool. To us.:D

Good afternoon, Holt. I agree with your assessment of the "knitting club" save for Saint, who likely wished to spend more time chasing bitches to spawn a new generation of undead-slaying canines.

Holt, I would actually reverse the situation. The hunters don't kill Dracula because the writer needs to keep the main villain/title character alive. Dracula doesn't kill the hunters because deep down, he loathes his existence and wants to be destroyed. He knows the hunters aren't good enough yet to destroy him, and his conscious mind intends to remain alive. But they clearly represent the most competent people out there wishing for his death and are gaining skills, so his subconscious is stopping him from ending their threat forever.

That the hunters debate the merits of destroying Dracula shows Wolfman's limits as a writer. We should have written his plots in a way that this debate does not really come up. None of the reasons why to not finish off Dracula make sense to the reader. Wolfman has his strengths as a writer, and his work on TOD is one of his best. But some of his plots in this run hit the ground with a dull thud.

I disagree with that interpretation of Dracula's reasons for keeping the hunters alive. I think it's more that Dracula enjoys the challenge the hunters present him with. In Tomb of Dracula 31-35, Dracula tells Harker that he enjoys their games of hunted or hunted.
The hunters, OTOH, just look like idiots for not killing Dracula when they have the chance.

Perhaps Dracula just keeps them alive for entertainment value because he's amused by how ineffectual they are.

I took the usage of "we" being used by Satan here to reference the "legion" comment in the Bible, when Jesus casts out the demons.