Гроб Дракулы: История Marvel Comics о вампирах

American comic book series by Marvel Comics

The Tomb of Dracula is an American horror comic book series published by Marvel Comics from April 1972 to August 1979. The 70 issue series featured a group of vampire hunters who fought Count Dracula and other supernatural menaces. On rare occasions, Dracula would work with these vampire hunters against a common threat or battle other supernatural threats on his own, but more often than not, he was the antagonist rather than protagonist. In addition to his supernatural battles in this series, Marvel's Dracula often served as a supervillain to other characters in the Marvel Universe, battling the likes of Blade the Vampire Slayer, Spider Man, the Werewolf, the X Men, Howard the Duck, and the licensed Robert E. Howard character Solomon Kane.

In 1971, the Comics Code Authority relaxed some of its longstanding rules regarding horror comics, such as a virtual ban on vampires. Marvel had already tested the waters with a "quasi vampire" character, Morbius, the Living Vampire, but the company was now prepared to launch a regular vampire title as part of its new line of horror books. After some discussion, it was decided to use the Dracula character, in large part because it was the most famous vampire to the general public, and also because Bram Stoker's creation and secondary characters were by that time in the public domain. The series suffered from lack of direction for its first year; most significantly, each of the first three issues was plotted by a different writer. Though Gerry Conway is credited as sole writer of issue #1, the plot was actually written by Roy Thomas and editor Stan Lee, and Conway had no input into the issue until it had already been fully drawn. Conway was allowed to plot issue #2 by himself, and wrote a story heavily influenced by the British Hammer Films a striking departure from the first issue, which was derivative of Universal's monster movies. though Wolfman himself has contended that he was floundering on the series until the story arc in issues #12 14, remarking, "This storyline is when I finally figured out what this book was about." Wolfman and Colan developed a bond while working on the series, on which they collaborated closely. Colan recalled, "He'd give me a written plot, but he'd also discuss it with me over the phone. I tended to ask questions, rather than to have him assume I got the idea." A brief meeting between Dracula and Spider Man occurred in the first issue of Giant Size Spider Man. The Tomb of Dracula #44 featured a crossover story with Doctor Strange #14, another series which was being drawn by Colan at the time. The Tomb of Dracula ran for 70 issues until August 1979. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that "With an unbroken run of seventy issues over the course of more than seven years, Marvel's The Tomb of Dracula was the most successful comic book series to feature a villain as its title character." As cancellation loomed, Wolfman made to wrap up the storyline and lingering threads by issue #72. But Jim Shooter, then the editor in chief, retroactively cut two issues after the artwork had been completed for three. As Wolfman recalled,

Twelve of those pages, which Wolfman had saved as photocopies, appeared in the hardcover reprint collection The Tomb of Dracula Omnibus Vol. 2. The series culminated with the death of Quincy Harker and Dracula's apparent death and dispersal. In 2010, Comics Bulletin ranked Wolfman, Colan, and Palmer's run on The Tomb of Dracula fifth on its list of the "Top 10 1970s Marvels".

A black and white magazine, Dracula Lives!, published by "Marvel Monster Group", ran from 1973 to 1975. Dracula Lives! ran 13 issues plus a reprint Super Annual issue. Running concurrently with Tomb of Dracula, the continuities of the two titles occasionally overlapped, with storylines weaving between the two. Most of the time the stories in Dracula Lives! were stand alone tales, including a serialized adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel, in 10 to 12 page installments written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Dick Giordano.

Tomb of Dracula was supplemented by a Giant Size companion quarterly comic book that ran for five issues in the mid 1970s. Artist John Byrne’s first story for Marvel Comics, "Dark Asylum", was published in Giant Size Dracula #5 (June 1975).

The color title Tomb of Dracula was succeeded by another black and white magazine, also called The Tomb of Dracula, with stories also drawn by Gene Colan that picked up where the color title left off. It lasted six issues from 1979 to 1980.

Several years later, Dracula encountered the X Men twice. Although Dracula (and all other vampires in the Marvel Universe) were eventually destroyed by the mystical Montesi Formula in the pages of Doctor Strange #62 (December 1983), the vampire lord was revived. Marvel published a four issue Tomb of Dracula miniseries, reuniting Wolfman and Colan, under its Epic Comics imprint in 1991, and revived Dracula and his foes in the short lived Nightstalkers and Blade series in the 1990s. Some unresolved plot threads from The Tomb of Dracula were addressed in the final three issues of Nightstalkers. These included the fates of Dracula's bride Domini, their son Janus, and vampire hunter Taj Nital. Dracula took the title role in the miniseries Dracula: Lord of the Undead. Two more four issue miniseries followed. Stoker's Dracula continued and concluded the adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel Dracula by writer Roy Thomas and artist Dick Giordano, which had begun in Dracula Lives 30 years prior. Another Tomb of Dracula miniseries followed with Blade joining a new team of vampire hunters to prevent Dracula's achieving godhood. Apocalypse vs. Dracula featured Dracula battling Apocalypse, an immortal foe of the superhero team the X Men, in Victorian London.

Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan returned to Dracula comics with The Curse of Dracula, a three issue miniseries published in 1998. The miniseries was published by Dark Horse Comics and was not officially associated with Marvel's Dracula series. A trade paperback collection was published in 2005.

In 1980, an anime television movie based on The Tomb of Dracula was released. It was titled Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned (闇の帝王 吸血鬼ドラキュラ). Much of the main plot was condensed and many characters and subplots were truncated or omitted. The film was animated in Japan by Toei and sparsely released on cable TV in North America in 1983 by Harmony Gold dubbed into English under the title Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned. On October 31, 2022, Kineko Video released a remastered 4K scan of the film's original 16mm print.

Character Japanese voice actor English dubbing actorDraculaKenji UtsumiTom WynerDominiHiroko SuzukiArlene BanasJanusKazuyuki SogabeMax ChristianQuincy HarkerYasuo HisamatsuRachel van HelsingMami KoyamaMelanie MacQueenFrank DrakeKeiichi NodaDan WorenSatanHidekatsu ShibataRichard EpcarLilithReiko KatsuraEdie MirmanAnton Lupeski Junpei TakiguchiL. Michael HallerTorgo Yasuo TanakaRobert V. BarronSaintRyō IshiharaNarrator Ryō IshiharaRobert V. Barron

Blade, a character introduced in The Tomb of Dracula, has been featured in a series of three films: Blade (1998), Blade II (2002), and Blade: Trinity (2004), as well as a short lived television series titled Blade: The Series (2006). Other Tomb of Dracula characters, Deacon Frost and Hannibal King, have been featured in these films (Frost in Blade, King in Blade: Trinity), albeit in heavily revised forms. Reference to the Tomb of Dracula series is made in Blade: Trinity when King shows an issue of the comic to Blade. Dracula himself does not appear in the series until Blade: Trinity, in which he goes by the name of "Drake" and features an origin and powers that differ from the comics. He is played in the film by Dominic Purcell. Given Drake's age and origin, he, more than any other vampire that followed, can harness a much greater and more dynamic range of abilities. He possesses superhuman strength, much greater than that of Blade, as well as incredible speed. Like those he sired, he is capable of leaping great distances and seems to be knowledgeable of sword fighting techniques, even rivaling Blade himself. Drake's true power is derived from his origin as the first of his species. The manipulation of energies which led to his first resurrection left Drake with two forms: human and a demonic alter ego. In this form, Drake is much stronger, resilient to all forms of damage and much taller than his human form. He possesses very keen senses, allowing him, for example, to catch an arrow in mid air.