Sure, there was Blade, and Frank Drake and Rachel Van Helsing; but they were heroes: ofttimes Dracula faced off against evil, perhaps not as great as his, but evil nonetheless. And today's issue throws a disembodied brain in for good measure: from 1974, Tomb of Dracula #20, "The Coming of Doctor Sun" Written by Marv Wolfman, pencils by Gene Colan, inks by Tom Palmer.
High in the Transylvanian Alps, Dracula is on the ropes here: starved for blood and being chased by Frank and Rachel in a helicopter and taking potshots at the vampire with wooden bullets. I'm not sure who's flying said copter, since the weather conditions are bad enough that Dracula can't turn into mist or a bat and fight the wind. Still, he finds shelter in a cave filled with treasure, and the bodies of two treasure hunters; but is disappointed since at least one of the bodies had been poisoned, and Drac can't even drink its blood.
There's a brief interlude for a flashback for Rachel Van Helsing: when she was still a child, Dracula had killed her family, intent on stopping the vampire hunter family line. Quincy Harker had saved Rachel, and then raised her. Meanwhile, in Ireland, "vampire Brand," meets his master, Doctor Sun; while the doctor's men capture Dracula and chain him up with garlic-wrapped chains. Sun had rescued one of Dracula's former lackeys, Clifton Graves, after an explosion on a yacht, and gave him an opportunity for revenge. Which is cut short when Frank and Rachel show up: they're forced to fight Sun's goons, while Graves fights Dracula, and Rachel accidentally shoots Graves in the back with a crossbow! The fight is then cut short, as Frank, Rachel, and Dracula are immobilized by Dr. Sun...who so far, seems like a brain on a TV screen. I didn't scan his appearance in Nova #25, but I was more used to Sun as a brain in a robot casing; I don't think he started out like that, though. Sun wants to duel Dracula for the title, "the throne of the lordship of vampires!" From this issue, I'm not sure he has any motive, other than that having an army of vampires at your command would admittedly be pretty cool...
The treasure cave corpses seem somewhat disconnected from the main plot line here; and it's slightly unclear that Dr. Sun appears in two places at the same time, by tele-conferencing, apparently. Rachel's story could've used a little more space, but she always makes me sad; since she was killed in X-Men Annual #6, which I read years before I ever saw her in Tomb of Dracula.
2 comments:
Didn't the FF fight Dr. Sun too during Doug Monench's run?
Yeah, I wanna say he was killed off there; but might'a come back in the years since?
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