Wolfman and artist Gene Colan teamed up in 1973 for what would turn out to be one of the most successful consecutive runs of a comic book title ever, and their seventy-issue Dracula series still registers great respect among comics fans of all ages. This year brought a reunion of sorts for the dynamic Dracula duo, as Dark Horse announced plans to revisit the story world's best-known vampire, and Wolfman and Colan signed on to tell the Dracula story the way they always wanted.
In July, fans of the classic Marvel series, and fans of the dreaded Count himself can sink their teeth into this revamped look at the world of Dracula. In the meantime, here's a look at the new series -- straight from the Wolfman himself.
Shawna Ervin-Gore: Marv, you have a new series coming out in July from Dark Horse: The Curse of Dracula. . .
Marv Wolfman: Right.
SE:And once again you're teamed with up Gene Colan. Since your original stint with Gene doing Tomb of Dracula for Marvel, what else you have two worked on together?
MW:Night Force for DC Comics, and that's really about it. We did Dracula for eight years at Marvel, and we did a four-parter a couple years later. We made quite a run of that series.
SE:And what's it like to be back together working with Gene after such a long time?
MW:I enjoy working with Gene. He's a people artist. He draws some of the best human beings, some of the most realistic expressions, and some of the best emotional characters of any artist that I'm familiar with. He has a very cinematic approach, and he's so strong with expression, you can spend your time writing character rather than having to explain plot, and as the writer, that really helps, because it allows me to really focus in on the characters. Introducing brand-new characters is always very, very difficult. We have to do an awful lot in a very short time, so Gene's strong character sense is a distinct benefit.
SE:And especially when you're working with something that's in the horror genre, showing expression is so important.
MW:Oh, it's vital, and Gene's expressions are not clichéd ones; they're very real. Unlike a lot of artists who would just draw, you know, wide open mouths and bugged-out eyes, Gene's characters can look very frightened. They can look trepidatious. They have all the shades of emotion that a writer needs to have access to in order to really tell the story well.
SE:That's probably part of the reason Tomb of Dracula was so successful for both of you. It also seems like it's one of the longest-running continuous series.
MW:I believe it may have been certainly at that time -- and I still think it may be today -- the longest running horror comic in comic history.
SE:Seventy continuous issues is something to speak of, and with all that experience writing the character of Dracula, you obviously have the concept of him down pretty well. I want to talk a little bit about the original series and what you did with the character of Dracula then. Who was Dracula in Tomb of Dracula?
MW:First, let me say that the Dracula of Marvel's Tomb of Dracula was created before I got onto the book. I started with issue seven, so I had to pretty much follow the type of character that had been set up. But over a period of time I moved him away from what the previous writers had done. There were three writers before me and six issues, and the Dracula that I did was somebody who had been a prince of his country -- prince of Transylvania. He was a warlord in many ways. He was very imperious, filled with incredible self-pride, and absolutely 100 percent arrogant. He was also a liar. He was a character who could not be trusted to do what he was saying. That's one of the reasons why I always avoided giving him thought balloons, so you only saw what he did, and you can only base his characterization on what he did, not what he said.
SE:You had no insight in him whatsoever because he never allowed it.
MW:Precisely. And the reason for that was I was totally influenced by the original Bram Stoker novel which is told in letters, diaries, newspapers clippings, etc. -- all from other people. The only knowledge that one has of Dracula is the way other people see him, and I think because of that you are able to maintain far more mystery and far more intrigue. I wanted to make sure then, as I want to make sure now, that we do not fully understand what his motives are, what his plans are, and what his intentions are.
SE:And that only furthers the story to have readers continuously speculating about his motives, and what he's doing, and where he's going next.
MW:It allows you to really develop the other cast members, the ones who are technically the heroes of the story, and also to see the differences in those characters because each one of them have come to Dracula in a different way. They're going to see him in a different fashion. They're going to react differently, and they're going to believe different things about him, so it helps in characterization of your secondary characters because all the characterization has to come through them. And again, the less you know about Dracula, the more interesting he is.
SE:I think so too. And in this new series, where is Dracula? In the first issue, he's not involved in much of the events that are transpiring.
MW:In the first issue he is setting up events. He is involved with a woman in that particular issue who is married to someone who will be running for President, but not even in this first story line. He is going to be someone; he is setting up his own situation as to what he wants now that he's here in America. This is a very different Dracula than the Marvel Dracula, who was a loner and actually never even cared for his own kind. He always thought they were peasants, and yet he was sort of forced to be with them. This latest Dracula is a very social character. He goes to parties. He is very involved with the Washington scene, at night only -- although he can come out in the daytime, as did Bram Stoker's. One of the nice things about being able to create it from scratch is I didn't have to follow the movie clichés that were put onto the Tomb of Dracula character. I could just go back to the original Stoker version which, again, separates what I'm doing now from what I did back then.
SE:So this Dracula can go out in the daylight, and he can move among normal crowds.
MW:Exactly, but his abilities are strongest at night, and so we can play with that. He's no longer forced to be idle half the day. He is fully capable of being out the entire time. The Bram Stoker character was the prince of his country, and at one point in Transylvania's history -- if you connect his Dracula with Vlad Tepes which is obviously what Stoker intended -- he was actually a hero. Yes, he was a murderer, and he murdered endless Turks, but he was a hero to his people. Consequently, this Dracula is more outgoing. He is not as inwardly focused as the Marvel Dracula was. He is very social. He does, as I say, go out to parties in the Washington scene. He's very alluring. Obviously the Dracula from the original novel is alluring, as well, because all the women who meet him are instantly drawn to him, and I'm playing off of that hypnotic lusting for the vampire the same way I hope that Stoker did. Only this is brought up to the 1990s rather than the 1890s , so this character is very different personality than the Marvel version.
SE:Allowing him that freedom of movement makes him more charismatic, and it also makes him less vulnerable to attack. It's probably also a little harder to find him, since he can move about so easily.
MW:Whereas my first Dracula character would have handled going after his enemies himself or sent vampires to get them, this Dracula would have no problem using humans, would have no problem coercing Congress to changing rules that would prevent our band of vampire hunters from bothering him. He would have no problem using existing laws as well as his own violence to accomplish whatever ends he needs.
SE:And he's obviously obtained some political pull.
MW:Exactly, and that's exactly what this story is particularly about. I'm a writer who tends to write best in series, and I enjoy building a character as it comes along as opposed to writing for one shots. And I'm hoping that the reader reaction to this first three parter is very strong because I think the character will grow and the vampire hunters will grow if I have more chances to do more stories with them. This is a strong, straightforward story, and it introduces so many themes that could be so good down the line.
SE:Obviously in order to make this book succeed, you're going to have to appeal to readers with it. What do you think appeals to so many people about the character of Dracula and about the vampire myth in general?
MW:That's interesting. I can tell you what appeals to me. I went to a vampire convention last year to see what that's like. I had never been to one before. Also, I've not been a big goer of vampire movies or a big reader of a lot of vampire literature. But what I find is of interest is the character who is sort of conflicted between what they've become and what they were, even though they don't acknowledge what they used to be anymore. The idea of a character who is a representation or an icon of evil interests me, and how he affects the humans who surround him interests me. Vampires by themselves don't interest me. The reason Dracula does is because he really is an icon for evil. He's a character who can coerce people, who can convert you into his own thoughts, and I think that has always been a very strong lure in fiction. It works extremely well in science fiction, such as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is also a very similar type thing where you get taken over against your will. The idea that your humanity could be taken away at any moment is something that I think people find interesting in a very perverse way.
SE:And it's fairly provocative given that vampires are seen as being so sensual in their blood lust.
MW:Exactly. Despite the fact that they are dead, and they probably cannot do anything truly sensual, a lot of current vampire mythology allows them to. But what they are truly doing is they're reaching into the darkest parts of you and drawing that darkness out. And the vampire hunters suddenly find their lives are totally wrapped around this very real evil to the point that they are no longer in control of themselves. They are now being controlled by something they feel they have to stop.
SG:And they are being seduced as readily as people who are giving in to that evil are being seduced.
MW:Exactly. Their lives, in many ways, have been completely destroyed in an effort to stop something that's evil. And as they fight to do this, they have to watch their humanity vanish too. They have to watch themselves start to do things that they would not like. One of the things that we play in the first Curse of Dracula story, is this new character who is brought into the midst of the vampire hunters, and they are giving him lie detector tests. They are interrogating him. They are so paranoid that they may be letting in someone who will eventually hurt them that you can watch that they themselves have been destroyed by this. It's a story about people who are watching themselves lose their own humanity and trying to hold onto it before it slips their grasp completely. And I think this plays off of so much on what we all go through in a way on a daily basis where what we are is almost reduced to what we have to be at work, and what we have to be to everyone else. Sometimes that's not exactly what we want to do, where we want to be or where our goals are, but that's what we have to become. Every day you are giving away some of your own humanity just to survive.
SG:It seems like a parallel would be a soldier in some military who thinks he's going off to fight for the freedom of his family, and the future of his kids, and in the process, he finds himself killing other people's kids and doing things that don't fit in with his values in any way.
MW:That's very true. If you look at a lot of what came out of Vietnam, and the effect it had on a lot of the soldiers, and how it altered all these ideas we grow up with -- it's a strong parallel. In fiction we tend to put our characters through the worst possible scenarios partly to see how we would react. If we were fighting something, if this vampire actually existed as opposed to being fictional, how would we be able to hold onto our humanity? How would we be able to preserve what we are? In the meantime, it's also just a fun story, and that's what we have to deal with too because you can't get too connected with the very grim aspects of the story. You don't want to forget that what you are trying to do is tell a scary story, a fun story, something that will give you the shivers. Then you back off with a little bit of a laugh -- though there are very few laughs in this story.
SE:The first issue doesn't seem very light at any point.
MW:No.
SE:Now I'm really intrigued with the concept of this politicized Dracula. It strikes me that you've created kind of a Rasputin character -- somebody who's very manipulative for his own purposes. What would you say his goals are in manipulating events like he's doing?
MW:Well, let's backtrack a little bit.
SE:Okay.
MW:The Marvel Dracula really never had any specific goals other than turning everybody into vampires.
SE:Yeah.
MW:There were some small goals along the way, but the basis of the character in many ways was fairly limited.
SE:And turning everybody into vampires is a very vague vampire concept in general.
MW:Yeah.
SE:As if they're acting only on the instinct to bite people.
MW:Exactly. And I've played with the idea that they are forced to do this because if they don't, their own blood (which has been poisoned) would become too impure. They need the constant purity of human blood to replenish their own. That's sort of the theory that I have. They have the hunger and the blood lust because they are predators, but also because if they don't, they themselves will be destroyed, not only from lack of blood, but from the poisons -- from the evil so to speak -- that courses through them. What I wanted with this Dracula was to go back to the concept again that he was originally Vlad Tepes, who, certainly, Stoker knew about because so much connects those two characters. Count was his title, so we know that he was a prince, we know that he was somebody who had great power and sought great power, and he also sought to protect his own people. So let's take this to a modern scenario. The world has changed. Doing things purely through violence is not going to win Dracula anything. He still enjoys the hunt because he is a hunter, and that will never go away. It also makes for good stories as he continues the hunt. But if you think of him as the ruler of this country who has now come to our country, he would want some position of power. He needs to be powerful and reign over something. He obviously can't sit in the White House himself; that is a total impossibility.
SE:He's a foreigner. He couldn't do it.
MW:And secondly he would have a tough time during the day. But also his nature is far more violent than we would ever accept today as a ruler. Our rulers sort of have to be middle of the road and TV perfect -- as opposed to someone who couldn't even be filmed.
SE:True.
MW:So he has to manipulate his power through others, and if he wants to rise to the same degree of power that he once had, that would give him some peace of mind. If he has power over people, and can control them, and can have them acting to meet his needs, this will please Dracula. This all goes back to the original concept of Dracula as the human being, and just because he's the vampire now, I don't think he would necessarily give up the idea of power. He just has to proceed differently than we ever showed in the Marvel days.
SE:And it all works toward self preservation for him.
MW:Exactly.
SE:To have a vampire conquer America would be quite an accomplishment (laughs).
MW:If he can do that, it has to begin on a small basis certainly. And before he gets into that direct position, there will be a lot of interesting and fun stories. And because we're not bound to the Marvel universe, we can do whatever we feel like with the developments.
SE:So let's talk more precisely about the setup of the three issue series you're doing. Why don't you lay a little groundwork? It sounds like it's all political, but there's an awful lot of big bat chases and really cool adventure stuff, too.
MW:The political storyline is the subtext of the plot. That's what Dracula is after, and putting him in a position where he's meeting people of power to me was more interesting than putting him into a position where he's just biting some, you know, person he finds on the street. But the bite is still the bite.