Saturday 13 June 2015

Giant Size Chillers featuring the Curse of Dracula #1 (1974)



Giant Size Chillers featuring the Curse of Dracula #1 (Marvel Comics)

Marv Wolfman (w) Gene Colan (a)

With the relaxation of the (now defunct) Comic Codes Authority after a confrontation with Marvel over a four part Spider-man drugs story, horror comics began to re-appear. Marvel in particular took advantage of this and launched a whole line of titles such as Werewolf by Night, The Living Mummy, The Frankenstein Monster and of course The Tomb of Dracula.

The latter was their most successful and longest running horror title but one until now I had never read.

This was the first of a short lived run of "Giant-Sized" comics that Marvel experimented with in the seventies. The title proved unwieldy and it became simply Giant Size Dracula for the rest of it's five issue (quarterly) run.

  

If this issue is anything to go by, Giant Size Dracula and the regular Tomb of Dracula series look like a good candidate for collecting.

In issue one we see the rebirth of Dracula's daughter Lilith in an old English "castle" as the undead one himself looks for a new place to "rest". The Wolfman/Colan team certainly delver a memorable tale and there is a two page prose history of Dracula at the end of the extra long main feature for people like me who are not familiar with Marvels take on the character.

As a bonus there's a couple of old horror reprints in this issue.

Methinks I will be seeking out further copies of these Marvel series!

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