(EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to Saturday Night Shivers, a feature at Paint Monk’s Library. In the spirit of Elvira, the Ghoul, and other horror movie hosts, we’ll be featuring a review of one classic horror comic each week. All horror stories we review are from books approved by the Comics Code Authority or from comics that were published before the code was enacted. This installment is written by Bob Freeman.)

I grew up on a farm in rural Indiana and was a voracious reader. This was long before the internet, of course, and television was limited to a couple of snowy channels on a black & white set. Books were my escape and read just about anything I could get my hands on.

I went through a period, around 1973-1975 when I devoured a bunch of “women running away from the castle” books. You know, gothic romances. I loved them, and why not? Dark Shadows trained me to appreciate the genre. Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt were my favorites.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered The Tomb of Dracula at Cain’s Sundries. The first issue that caught my eye was issue #23, which, naturally, had a woman running away from a shadowy Victorian mansion, an enlarged Count looming over the scene. I was enthralled and eagerly dropped my two-bits for the comic, discovering the wondrously dark and foreboding illustrations of Gene Colan and Tom Palmer inside.

I was smitten, becoming a lifelong fan of what is arguably the best horror comic ever written. Let’s have a look at what caught my eye, shall we?

Review: Tomb of Dracula #23

Picking up the action where Chillers #1 concluded, we find Count Dracula and Shiela Whittier standing over the corpse of Lord Henry, the British parliamentarian who had served the Count for years. In a recap, we discover that Henry betrayed the Count, arranging for him to take over Ms. Whittier’s Castle.

The Count learned that Shiela was being tormented and abused, and was under the impression that Henry was the culprit, but it was all some sort of trap, however, and Lord Henry committed suicide in Dracula’s presence even as a burst of ominous laughter filled the castle. Shiela is suddenly attacked by an unseen force, leaving her cut across the face. Dracula takes her to bed to rest, musing that she will be a useful servant to do his bidding.

He reflects on his encounter with his daughter Lilith, and of Shiela’s innocence, when he is interrupted by a knock at the door. He opens the door, finding no one there, but is suddenly grabbed by an invisible presence that pulls him out of the room.

Dracula is thrown over the balcony, but transforms into a bat. Hearing Shiela scream, he races back to the room to discover she has been roused by ghosts. She explains to Dracula that she is haunted by the ghost of her uncle, Alestar Dunwick.

After her aunt and uncle’s death, she was willed the house. She moved in with her boyfriend, but the young man was uneasy about the house, sensing a frightful presence. His fears were proved to be true when he was thrown down the stairs and killed by unseen forces. Dracula leaves her then to feed. He allows a motorist to run him over, then feeds on the driver when she advances to see if he was injured.

Meanwhile, Shiela explores the castle only to be confronted by the spirit of Alestar Dunwick. Alestar explains that he is not her uncle, but in reality her father.

He tells of how he was murdered by Shiela’s mother and that he returned, assuming the form of her lover and driving the woman to suicide and taking her money… money that had been his. He eventually remarried and spent the years keeping track of Shiela.

Dunwick reveals that he had sold his soul to Satan for earthly power and planned to sacrifice her soul to his infernal master. Dunwick takes her to the basement, to the altar of his Church of the Damned, where finds the bodies of those he had sacrificed before her in an attempt to reanimate himself once more.

Shiela tries to flee so Dunwick assaults her, using his unholy powers to animate the debris littering the estate and hurling it at her. Dracula arrives and fights his way through the phantasm’s attack, grabbing Dunwick’s mummified corpse and crushing it against a wall.

With the body destroyed, Dunwick’s soul is drawn down into Hell.  “How could you end my life so… How could you?” Dunwick moaned. “You’re a Child of Hell as I am.”

“I am Dracula, ghost,” the Count replied, “and I am a greater Hell than you could ever imagine.”

CAPSULE REVIEW: Man, that was a lot of story crammed into 18 or so pages. Not only was all of Chillers #1 recapped, but a wealth of subplots and convoluted story points were juggled and deployed masterfully by Marv Wolfman.

This is an art form long lost on modern comic scribes, I’m afraid. In an age of decompressed stories, this one issue would surely have spanned a half-dozen modern comics.

Of course, Wolfman had two consummate draughtsmen in Gene Colan and Tom Palmer to deliver what had to be a maddening task to pull off, but that’s what made Tomb of Dracula so special. It was bold and fearless, delivering beautiful art and very adult themes with an edgy style that was unlike anything else at the time.

Dracula was brilliantly reimagined as both a hero and a villain in this title with his dashing, Jack Palance-like looks, his sense of honor, but more importantly, his hunger.

Colan and Palmer’s art style on this was truly remarkable, though, admittedly, I think it looked better in black and white. That’s not a dig at colorist Petra Goldberg (more commonly known as Petra Scotese). She did a masterful job of breathing life into the work, but the mood I think was better served in grayscale. I feel the same regarding Conan’s turn at Marvel, but I digress.

For my first foray into Tomb of Dracula, this issue was a mind-blowing, mind-altering experience. There was just so much to take in, so much backstory that somehow Marv Wolfman and company were able to translate in just a few pages. That’s a neat trick.

If you’ve never given Tomb of Dracula a look, you’re really missing out. While writers like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman get all the love for their adult and literary approach to comics, it was Wolfman who struck first and every bit as well.

On a scale of 1-10, I’d rate this issue an 8. On eBay, Tomb of Dracula #23 was available between $6-15, but you can pick up the trade paperback of Tomb of Dracula Vol. 2 from Amazon, featuring issues #13-23, plus Werewolf by Night #15 and Giant-Size Chillers #1 for less than $10.