SYNOPSIS
TOMB OF DRACULA
# 25 - 30

King then turns to investigating Fred Walters' employers, a company called Wyandanch Limited where the victim worked as an accountant for their international shipping interests. He sneaks into the dockside shipping office just as Dracula is conspiring with a fellow named O'Brien, one of his non-vampiric underlings. As the count becomes aware of his presence he attacks King, and in the ensuing fight Dracula's servant is wounded by a stray bullet from King's gun whilst the private eye himself is hurled out of a window on the second floor by Dracula.

King immediately heads for the warehouse in question and finds Dracula as well as several of his vampire followers there. With his vampire slaves fallen victim to King's swift but determined attack moves and police sirens wailing in the distance, Dracula decides that it is best to leave the scene, even though this means conceding victory to King - at least for the time being.

The following evening, Hannibal King meets up with Adrianne Walters and tells her everything that he has learned, explaining that Dracula killed her husband to cover up the evidence concerning the exportation of his various coffins. Adrianne leaves, without ever learning the true reason why Hannibal King knows so much about vampires and is so adept in fighting them - the reason is that he is, in fact, one himself.

Dracula appears only briefly in issue 25 as Hannibal King takes center stage, but his presence is imposing

Marv Wolfman had a soft spot for classic hard-boiled film noir private eyes, and his Hannibal King was perfect right down to his name. The extremely intense and compelling storytelling combined with the densely atmospheric artwork by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer to form nothing short of an hommage to the detetctive mystery genre.

"Hannibal King came out of my love for the old 30s/40s mystery stories. King's very much in that great tradition of hard-boiled detectives, but he has one thing extra going for him: vampire abilities that let him see things and do things ordinary detectives could only wish for." (Marv Wolfman, quoted from www.marvwolfman.com)

Issue #25 also showed and opened up the immense potential which Tomb of Dracula now had. Throughout the book there is no glimpse of the gang of vampire hunters, and Dracula only makes a very late and brief appearance, but even with an entirely new character in the form of Hannibal King, everything worked just perfectly. Unlike previous one-shot story issues, Wolfman had now developed the series to the point where he could actually turn an issue such as Tomb of Dracula #25 into a prime event rather than just see it and have it as a fill-in.

Hannibal King is Wolfman's second attempt (after Tomb of Dracula #8) to introduce a vampire who is not quintessentially evil and keeps his blood-lust in check. The character is so exceptionally well crafted that, although a secondary character, he also made it into the film Blade III. And even though, as pointed out, this is quintessentially a stand-alone issue, Wolfman did insert plot points which connected to events outside of Tomb of Dracula #25, as King's prime motivation to take on the case of Fred Walter's murder is the fact that he is dedicated to obviously hunting down the same vampire who killed Blade's mother (a common story thread which indicated that King would be back, but Wolfman actually kept readers waiting for this to happen for a good 18 months real time). Furthermore, this issue also continues to show the gradual (and at this stage still unexplained) loss of Dracula's vampiric powers.  As Lord of the Vampires, Dracula should be able to dominate King's thoughts and actions, but he clearly fails.

Tomb of Dracula #25 was reprinted in 1994 with only the ads being up to date and the entire Marvel content side (including letters page and editorial pages) left just as it was originally published twenty years earlier.

Soon after this incident, Dracula appears at the pawn shop because he has learned from one of his informants that Eshcol may have acquired the complete chimera, but only finds the place in ruins. At the same time, David Eshcol who had left the scene under shock runs into Sheila Whittier. Not knowing about her ties to Dracula, he has no reason to doubt her statement that his father supposedly met with her to discuss the chimera, and Eshcol tells her what he knows about the powers of the artefact, the events which led to the stealing of two of its three parts, and most importantly, that he himself holds the remaining third piece.

Wanting to learn more about the background and origin of the chimera, David Eshcol takes Sheila to consult with an old and somewhat eerie woman who, as his father told him, supposedly knows all about the Chimera.  She tells her two visitors that the chimera was crafted more than thiry thousand years ago in the ancient city of Atlantis and quickly resulted in madness, destruction and death. The old woman relates the many twisted ways and events in which the Chimera then appeared throughout history, again spreading death wherever it was found, before the artefact finally disappeared in the Middle Ages - although it seems to have reappeared recently.  Again, the message is that the chimera can guide or destroy the world, and that only a stable individual can actually use it. 

The first part of the origin of the chimera - page 23 of Tomb of Dracula #26, pencilled by Gene Colan and inked by Tom Palmer; Left: Original artwork (scanned from the original art page in my personal collection) - Right: the page as it appeared in print.

Apart from launching the chimera story arc, Wolfman also sets up several plot sidelines which will become important story elements in future issues. Amongst these, Taj is admonished by an old friend in his Indian village that he really ought to return to his wife before their son dies, and Frank Drake (who has "officially" left Quincy Harker's group of vampire hunters) is offered a new direction in life through a job offer as the head of the Brazilian side for an enterprise run by an old friend of his, Danny Summers, and gladly accepts the offer, thus heading out to Brazil.

As for the quest for the chimera, it is quite evident that the other party seeking the artefact must be none other than Dr Sun...

A more in-depth review and analysis of this issue is available here:
A Vampire stalks the Night!

Dracula approaches David and orders him to give him the piece of the chimera, and although Eshcol senses that something is not quite right, he succumbs to the suggestive powers of Dracula and hands over his piece of the statue. The lord of vampires then demonstrates the incredible power of just one piece by raining down fire all over the globe - an event even witnessed by Taj in India. Dracula then uses the chimera to reverse his destruction and return everything to normal, and Eshcol (as well as the reader) is left to wonder just what would be possible when the chimer ais in fact complete...

One thing the solitary piece of the statue cannot do, however, is to locate the other missing pieces, but the power is sufficient for Dracula to be able to raise a virtual army of the undead to help him in his search. Turning to Eshcol, Dracula mocks him for his naive actions and intends to bring this episode to an end, but as he attempts to bite him, David lashes out his star of David pendant into the face of Dracula, who is scarred and pulls back in anger. However, as Eshcol reaches for the piece of the chimera which has dropped to the ground, he is forced to watch at gunpoint as two strangers take hold of it. 

Meanwhile, Frank Drake arrives in Brazil and is anxious to get started on his new job, although he somehow has a mysteriously impending sense of danger.

The recurring story device and focal point of the chiemra story arc is the elementary human condition of doubt - most noteably self-doubt - and trying to bring personal hopes and expectations into sync with actual reality. This is exemplified by Sheila Whittier, whose desire for  love is made futile by her inability to see the truth behind Dracula, and David Eshcol, whose longing for wisdom is hindered by his inability to accept and understand the existence of the supernatural. Dracula, on the other hand, uses these dilemmas and the self-doubts to manipulate both of them to fit his own purposes.

Wolfman also introduces an interesting piece of vampirology knowledge as he shows that the star of David can be used very much the same way as a crucifix because, as Dracula himself explains, all religious symbols can repulse a vampire.

With the artefact now in his hands, the tables have turned, but before Dracula can make good use of the new situation, his remark that he will now leave after eliminating David Eshcol enrages Sheila to the point where she grabs the chimera from Dracula's hand and smashes it against the wall.  To the sheer disbelief, horror and anger of Dracula, Sheila tells him that she is not his servant and leaves with her new lover David.

Bringing the chimera story arc to a close, Wolfman depicts Dracula as a figure who has always prided himself of his control and mastery of others but has now been both defied and humiliated - not exactly what one would expect from the lord of vampires. Just how and why this can happen will become a focal point of the next major plot developments.

Overall, the chimera story is one of the strongest writings from Marv Wolfman for the series, and Tomb of Dracula #26-28 are highlights of the entire run of the title. The storytelling is extremely dense and increasingly embraces topics and plot techniques which clearly address a far more mature readership than most Marvel titles at the time. - the hunt for the mysterious artefact is both juxtaposed and intertwined with the triangle of emotions and relationships between Dracula, Sheila and Davis. With the chimera issues, Wolfman had finally taken Tomb of Dracula completely out of the "all ages" framework - which was exactly what he had always intended to do:

"It seemed to me that this was an ideal concept to try and do more realistic comics, to try and break out of the comics for 11 year olds (...) I really wanted to try to write something that was starting to appeal to my age." [SIUNTRES John (2006) Marv Wolfman by Night, transcribed from the podcast Word Balloon: The Comic Creator's Interview Show , available online at wordballoon.libsyn.com]

Back in London again, David Eshcol is convinced that he and Sheila will only have a common future if he can end Dracula's haunting presence in both their lives. Driving to the count's current castle of residence, he is well prepared with a hammer, a stake and the courage to go through with his plans. The only thing he lacks is good timing, and as he opens Dracula's coffin the sun is already setting behind the horizon, and he falls at the hands of the newly risen lord of the undead. Taking Eshcol's dead body to Sheila's apartment and dropping it at her feet, Dracula once more faces a woman who stubbornly withstands his manipulations as she steps back in terror and crashes through a window down to the street. Dracula dives out after her but is too slow and cannot prevent her deadly fall - yet another defeat for the vampire count.

The picture of Dracula drawn up by Marv Wolfman in Tomb of Dracula #29 is an entirely gloomy and utterly despicable one, emphasizing the vampire count's inhuman views and twisted perceptions of the basic principles of relationships.

Almost an anthology issue, Tomb of Dracula #30 highlights Wolfman's desire to link up and anchor the series with real events and places while again showing Dracula's twisted perception of social concepts central to a humane society.

With the storyline and general plot becoming increasingly complex and also more ambitious in terms of what it required from the reader to truly follow the events unfolding, the series also showed clear signs of an increasing level of gory violence - rather similar to the "second wave" of vampire films produced by the British Hammer film studios in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The illustrations presented here are copyright material and are reproduced for strictly non-commercial and appreciative review purposes only.
Text is (c) 2006-2014 A. T. Wymann

page originally posted on the web 19 June 2006
page completely revised 21 September 2009
page updated and reposted 22 March 2014