Dracula Lives

Dracula Lives! was an American black-and-white horror comic magazine series published by Marvel Comics in the mid-1970s. Dracula Lives! published 13 issues and one reprint annual, featuring Dracula stories.

Running concurrently with the longer-running Marvel comic Tomb of Dracula, the continuities of the two titles occasionally overlapped, with storylines weaving between the two. Most of the time, however, the stories in Dracula Lives! were stand-alone tales by various creative teams. Later issues of Dracula Lives! featured a serialized adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel, written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Dick Giordano.

The magazine format did not fall under the purview of the Comics Code, allowing the title to feature stronger content — such as moderate profanity, partial nudity, and more graphic violence — than Marvel's "mainstream" titles. The larger format allowed the interior artists to "stretch out" a bit more. Painted covers of the series were done by artists like Boris Vallejo, Neal Adams, and Luis Dominguez. Dracula Lives!' text and photo articles were mostly of the Count's various film appearances. The title of the magazine's letter column was "Dracula Reads!"

Publication history

Dracula Lives! was released concurrently with Vampire Tales and Monsters Unleashed under the Marvel Monster Group brand in 1973.

The character Lianda first appeared in Dracula Lives! #1. The character Turac first appeared in Dracula Lives! #2 (Sept. 1973). The character Nimrod first appeared in Dracula Lives! #3 (Oct. 1973), created by Marv Wolfman and John Buscema.

The series was cancelled in 1975, along with the other black-and-white horror magazines Marvel was experimenting with during this period.

Collections

Much of the material in Dracula Lives! was reprinted in a Marvel UK weekly reprint title of the same name. It eventually merged with the Marvel UK Planet of the Apes weekly, and with issue 60 the title became Dracula Lives Featuring the Legion of Monsters.

All 13 issues of Dracula Lives! were collected for an Essential Marvel edition in 2005. (Dracula Lives! #1-2 was also collected in 2006 as part of Essential Tales of the Zombie: Volume 1.) In 2010 the complete series (including the letter columns) was reprinted in the Marvel Omnibus title Tomb of Dracula Volume 3 (which included The Tomb of Dracula Magazine #1-6 and The Frankenstein Monster #7-9).

Serialized adaptation of Stoker's Dracula

Issues #5–8 and 10–11 featured a serialized adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel, in 10- to 12-page installments written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Dick Giordano.

Following Dracula Lives!' cancellation, an additional installment appeared in Marvel Preview #8 ("The Legion of Monsters"),^[1] for a total of 76 pages comprising roughly one-third of the novel.^[2] After a thirty-year hiatus, Marvel commissioned Thomas and Giordano to finish the adaptation, and ran the reprinted and new material as the four-issue miniseries Stoker's Dracula (Oct. 2004 – May 2005).^[2][3]

The entire adaptation was collected by Marvel Illustrated in 2010.

References

External links

• 'Dracula Lives!' at the Comic Book DB